Stewart Home's Blog, page 12

From Paradise Row To A Rock & Roll Toilet

On Thursday (17 November 2011) I went to the opening of Margarita Gluzberg's Avenue Des Gobelins. She seems to do a solo exhibition with her London gallery Paradise Row more or less annually. For 2011 her focus is photography – last time around she was showing paintings and before that drawings of pugilists. In Avenue Des Gobelins Gluzberg projects slides and video onto graphite paper, thereby referencing drawing – which lies at the heart of her multidisciplinary practice – in the way she presents her photographic and film work.

Gluzberg is also exhibiting platinum prints – the most expensive photographic developing process – featuring similar subject matter to her projections. The images are double and sometimes triple exposures of shots of expensive department stores. This exploration of the display of luxury goods very consciously draws out parallels with various modes of museum exhibition and interpretation; it is therefore implicitly critical of both consumerism and the institution of art. Gluzberg's opening was busy and there was an after party at Chinawhite – a one time haunt of celebrities whose idea of living dangerously was to frequent a nightclub named after a specific type of heroin.

I didn't make it to Chinawhite. Instead I headed to The 12 Bar – a rock and roll dive on Denmark Street – where I heard a set of tunes that thirty plus years ago were regularly described as 'love songs for objects' (and within which heroin addiction forms the central subject matter). Former Hearthbreakers' bassist Billy Rath was playing a bunch of songs mostly written by his old group's front-man Johnny Thunders. He had with him a pick-up band consisting of Chris Low on drums and Nuno Viriato on guitar. As far as I can recall, I'd last seen Rath play as part of Iggy Pop's backing group at The Lyceum in London's Strand back in 1979. Rath had disappeared from public view in 1985, only to re-emerge on the music scene a few years ago  – having done both rehab and university (psychology at graduate level and post-grad in theology) in a 'lost weekend' that went on for more than two decades.

Among the select crowd present, the arrival onstage of Billy Rath's Street Pirates was greeted with rapturous applause. The band started with Pipeline, the tune that opened Johnny Thunders' solo album So Alone. The Street Pirates were rough and ready but had the right chemistry to rock out. They ran through a half-a-dozen or so familiar songs – some of them twice – including Pirate Love, Born To Lose, Chinese Rocks and Do You Wanna Dance. The audience were ecstatic. A Spanish punkette in tightly fitting cropped shorts, black stockings, knee high books, and a Sex Pistols shirt, got up on the tiny stage and spread her legs wide across the boards, before proceeding to make amateur erotic dance moves.

Billy Rath lost his left foot in a car accident some time ago and now has a prosthetic leg. It's a real effort for him to stand upright while wielding a heavy bass guitar onstage – he needs both hands to play so he can't use his walking stick. The Spanish punkette clearly didn't know this and arched over backwards with her legs spread to grab Billy's right calf with both hands – she then mimed sucking Rath's dick with her face beneath his crotch. Billy accepted the situation and treated it with good humor, but the girl didn't want to let go of him. I was amazed and impressed Rath managed to stay upright. Afterwards people were laughing about this and imagining the Euro punkette's shock if she'd grabbed Billy's other calf and discovered that like story book pirates, Rath had a false leg!

I left The 12 Bar with a grin on my face and confident that I'd made the right choice in ducking out of the Chinawhite party. That said, I was left wondering what kind of work Margarita Gluzberg might make about Billy Rath and other members of The Heartbreakers…. A series of drawings of these notorious New York degenerates would be every bit as powerful as her wonderful pugilists. And just in case you don't know, both Johnny Thunders and Heartbreakers drummer Jerry Nolan died in the early 1990s; while according to Wikipedia lead guitarist Walter Lure now works on Wall Street (presumably as a stockbroker).

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

10 Best Royal Deaths Of All Time!

1. Charles I – who was beheaded on 30 January 1649. The execution was at Whitehall in London. At the very least, the current British royal family need to be completely stripped of their titles and wealth – although there are those who think it would also be a good idea to behead, hang, or shoot them!

2. Cleopatra VII Philopator is by tradition said to have committed suicide on 12 August 30 BC by inducing a snake to give her a poisonous bite. She was following in the footsteps of her bigamous husband Mark Anthony, who topped himself after losing the Battle of Actium on 2 September 31 BC. Regardless of quibbles over the exact details of Cleopatra's death, it marked the ultimate demise of the Pharaoh royal parasites in ancient Egypt.

3. Louis XVI – beheaded by guillotine at Place de la Révolution in Paris on 21 January 1793. This was the event that finally put an end to royal parasites in France.

4. Diana, Princess of Wales – who was fatally injured in a car crash in the Ponte de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris on 31 August 1997. It is unfortunate that her ex Prince Charles – current heir to the British throne – didn't die with her!

5. Frederick, Prince of Wales – who died from a burst abscess in the lung on 20 March 1751 at Leicester House in London – nearly a decade before his scumbag father George II. There are, of course, millions around the world hoping that the arch-reactionary slimeball Prince Charles will follow in Frederick's footsteps and drop down dead right now!

6. Nicholas II of Russia was condemned to death and then shot by Yakov Yurovsky shortly after 2.00 am on the morning of 17 July 1918. There is little in Bolshevism to be praised but getting rid of the Russian royal parasites was definitely one of its better ideas – much of the Russian royal family was shot at the same time as Nicholas II.

7. King Dipendra of Nepal – who shot himself with an AK 47 after going postal and murdering nine of his family of parasites at a house in the grounds of the Narayanhity Royal Palace on 1 June 2001. Among those Dipendra shot to death were his mother and father – King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya. Dipendra, who after shooting himself outlived his parents for three days, only got to be ruler while in a coma – making for a delightfully short reign!

8. Princess Grace of Monaco – who died in hospital on 14 September 1982, the day after suffering a stroke that caused her to lose control of her car and suffer serious injuries after it plunged down the side of a mountain.

9. George I of Greece – shot in the back by the anarchist assassin Alexandros Schinas at the White Tower in the city of Thessaloniki on 18 March 1913. Like Bolshevism, anarchism doesn't have much to offer the working class, but Schinas's practical opposition to monarchy and aristocracy is something with which most people will have some sympathy.

10. Queen Elizabeth II. Okay so she ain't dead yet but there are millions of us in the UK looking forward to seeing the back of this particular royal parasite! But don't forget kids, we still need to strip the entire British royal family of their titles and wealth!

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

In New York Paranoia Is Just A Heightened State Of Awareness!

I arrived at the Heathrow Virgin Atlantic bag drop late. I was told I'd missed missed my plane and to go to desk 13 to discuss whether I could be transferred to another flight. The next person I talked to told me that since my bag to be checked was well below 10kg, I could take it as hand luggage on my original flight, but that I'd have to run to the gate. I got through security in good time and made it to the plane by sprinting all the way. I was pleased to be the last passenger on-board and having avoided hanging around – all that queuing is such a drag!

I checked the in-flight entertainment and since all the film and music selections were complete and utter wank, decided to read Barry Graham's new book The Wrong Thing instead. This turned out to be a smart move since I really dug Graham's noir-style prose which was finely crafted and engrossing. A Mexican-American boy called The Kid who isn't loved by his family gets into drug dealing, finds love and in loosing it winds up dead. All the trademark Graham interests are present too – from boxing to the unnecessary cruelty of capital punishment. On one level the book is a narrative essay illustrating how the law serves the rich and screws the poor.

Returning to my flight, I was travelling economy and since I'd last taken a transatlantic jaunt on Virgin they seemed to have introduced three classes of travel. I guess you get what you pay for and in premium economy they had more and larger toilets – the rich don't just shit like you and me, they do it on a grander scale! The attendants got very pissed off with economy passengers who went into the premium economy bogs – they'd have probably had a heart attack if we'd tried to use the first class karzai! It wasn't exactly service with a smile – when tea and coffee were being offered around and I asked for water, I was told I could only have a hot beverage. So I had to say I wanted a black coffee but to hold the coffee, so I ended up with a cup of hot water. Why I couldn't just have a glass of cold water beats me… Likewise all the pep talk to passengers about safety is obviously absolutely nuts when Virgin make their female flight attendants wear high-heels. I saw one stewardess fall on her arse and I'm sure she wouldn't have tumbled if she'd been wearing flat shoes.

Remembering I wanted to go for a heightened state of awareness on this trip, I decided to develop my paranoia and assume the guy in the seat next to me was an undercover cop. We didn't say much to each other, although that may have been because he spent much of the flight asleep. I like to stay awake, not just because it seems safer when you're simulating paranoia but also because it's a way of easing into a new time zone. I finished Barry Graham's book and had to move onto another less interesting one. I was pleased when we landed at JFK and I got to immigration. At first the immigration officer gave me a bit of a grilling, but when he asked what my job was and I told him novelist, he became very friendly. I always say novelist at immigration because it is both true and generally seen as less contentious than if you say you're a writer (you might be a subversive journalist) or an artist (in which case you'll probably be suspected of making porn).

I didn't have to wait long for the express bus to Manhattan. I got off at 42nd Street and crossed the road to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It was a short hop to Hoboken. On the way I checked the voice mail messages that had come in on my US cell phone while I was back in London for twelve days. Two of them were a regular series of bleeps – probably just random attempts to send spam faxes, but that didn't mean I couldn't pretend to be paranoid about them. When I arrived in Hoboken I saw immediately the place had undergone a massive change. The town looked nothing like it had when I'd last stayed there back in the eighties. It was Friday night and people were partying on the street as if having a good time was about to go out of fashion. Instead of local stores and down market chains like Domino's Pizza, it now boasted branches of Footlocker and American Apparel, as well as a lot of trendy bars.

Tom McGlynn's apartment building was now an anachronism, it looked as run down as when I'd first stayed there more than twenty years before. Going through the hallway and up the stairs there were still blaring TVs and shouted conversations in both Spanish and English. Tom has a rent controlled flat and he'd been doing it up, so it looked much smarter than when I was last there. We chatted for a couple of hours – mostly about Occupy Wall Street – and then crashed out. Tom's take on OWS was really interesting because he was designing shelters for protesters to sleep in, so he was involved in some very practical discussions about how to keep the movement growing. But he was also keeping a close eye on the various elements involved in political discussions around the occupation.

Saturday morning was just a question of acclimatising to the hood. Last time I'd been in Tom's flat there was a view of the Hudson River from one end, but new and expensive apartment buildings had completely hidden the water. After lunch it was time to head to Manhattan. We took the PATH rather than the bus. We got off at 9th Street and went to St Marks Books, which is still the best place to pick up texts in New York. From there we moved on to Bullet Space, an artists collective on the Lower East Side. I sat in on Tom's meeting with Alex Rojas and Andy Castrucci about a group show they were including him in entitled Mob. When we exited Bullet Space we ran into Carlo McCormack on the street outside the gallery.

I hadn't seen McCormack since 1989 and we chatted about our mutual friend Jon Savage, as well as the Billy Childish opening that I'd missed since it had taken place a couple of hours before I arrived at JFK. Tom and I headed up to White Columns so that I could check in with the gallery and see how my show there had been going. When we arrived we were told we'd missed Billy Childish and Steve Lowe by minutes – they'd been in together to see my retrospective before heading on to the airport. From there we moved around the corner to Snice for coffee and burritos. After our refreshments, we made out way to Murray Guy on West 17th Street for the opening of Ann Lislegaard's show TimeMachine. A cartoon creature projected onto mirrors stuttered segments of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells… It grooved us and I'm sure it would appeal to the kids too!

When Tom headed back to Hoboken, I made my way to White Columns for an Eileen Myles reading of prose, poetry and a long extract from an essay she'd contributed to the SF MOMA catalogue for The Air We Breathe: Artists & Poets Reflect On Marriage Equality. I'd been to see Myles read at Apexart two weeks earlier, but had to miss her performance because she was on last and the event ran late. White Columns had bought me a yoga mat for my performance there a couple of weeks earlier, and since it was still in one of the offices, I decided to take it away so that I could practice my headstand reading in comfort. I quickly discovered that in New York guys use yoga mats as 'babe magnets'. On the subway four girls aged about twenty started to hit on me by initiating a conversation about yoga. Once I was safely back in Hoboken, Tom introduced me to two Canadian friends who'd come to visit him – Mary and Larry. I'd only been away from the US for twelve days but during that time the clocks had gone back an hour in the UK. Now I was in the east coast for the weekend when the clocks went back there…. It seemed like I was in a time slip.

Sunday morning was a chance to run through the stuff I was planning to do on Thursday for the Performa live art festival – including my headstand reading. After lunch I headed to Brooklyn… I took the PATH to 14th Street in Manhattan, changed onto the L train and then changed once again to the G train. I'd heard the G train was really infrequent but I caught one quickly and arrived early at Tim Beckett and Charlotte Jackson's pad a couple of blocks from the Bedford Nostrand subway stop. You could see the area was being gentrified but it still had more of the old time vibe than anywhere else I'd been since I'd arrived in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area.

Next to turn up at Tim and Charlotte's was Ron Kolm. As more people arrived – including Carl Watson and Maggie Wrigley – it became an old school East Village writers meet with me as the overseas guest of honour. When Darius James walked in with Norman Douglas, it was great to see DJ for the first time in five or six years. When I complimented Charlotte on the music she was playing – a lot of Model 500 among other things – and asked her how she had picked a bunch of my favourite tunes, she told me that this was easy to do, since she'd been checking the links I posted on my Facebook page. That really helped raise my state of awareness by making me paranoid that every intelligence and police agency in the world knows I like sixties soul tunes and old school house!

Shortly after this, John Farris arrived and he had real presence. I've not read his novel The Ass's Tale but will try to make up for that omission in due course. I ended up sitting with Darius, Norman and John for a long time: and rather than trying to give a flavour of the conversation here, it's easier just to direct you to an online interview of Norman's with John. Following much chat, chow and drinking, everyone settled down to watch a rough cut of the documentary about voodoo that Darius was scripting and presenting. The movie went down a storm, with everyone impressed by the classy cinematography… and the way Darius explained some of the finer points he was wanting to get across as the footage rolled… After the screening most people split, and once again I had no problem getting a G train. I was back in Hoboken by 11.30pm.

Monday morning was another chance to hang in Hoboken and practice for my performance… At lunchtime I headed into Manhattan to meet with Darius, Tim, Tom and Mary in The Old Town on East 45th Street. Tom and Mary had gone into town with Larry ahead of me – but Larry then went off in search of famous baseball sites in Brooklyn. I was travelling alone and everyone else arrived late. I had a bet with myself that Tom and Mary would arrive before Tim and Darius, and when they did I took out the 100 bucks I had in my left pocket and placed the notes in my right pocket. The Old Town was a traditional bar with booths and ultra-retro toilets (or maybe they'd just never been refitted). We talked about writing and the stuff Darius was doing, so voodoo was on the agenda too. Tom and Mary left before me, so Tim and I walked Darius down to Grand Central Station well after dark, then went our own ways. I'd planned to go to to both Occupy Wall Street and MOMA that day, but ended up spending all of it in The Old Tavern before heading back to Hoboken. After eating everyone at Tom's settled down to a Roger Corman produced piece of trash in the form of a DVD of Sharktopus… I was laughing so much at the movie that I forgot I was supposed to be paranoid, so that rather blew my attempts at heightened perception for the day!

Directed by Declan O'Brien, Sharktopus is one of those "so bad it's good' movies that came out last year. Corman has nice cameo as a mean spirited beach walker, and Eric Roberts looks like he was method acting being a drunk. We were speculating on the dinner conversation between the Roberts family when they meet up, with Eric's more famous sister Julia talking about her latest A-list Hollywood productions, and Eric announcing he's in Sharktopus. The monster isn't in the least bit scary but there are plenty of laughs and girls in bikinis – including a group of 'babes' doing yoga sun salutations on the beach as the half-shark/half-octopus creature attacks….

Tuesday was another morning of hanging in the hood and working on my act. After lunch I went to Manhattan to meet Mark Bloch on the Lower East Side. On the way I dropped in on This Is What Democracy Looks Like  – an Occupy Wall Street themed show in an NYU building on Washington Place. There were handmade signs and printed ephemera from OWS. When I hooked up with Mark we rapped about art and politics, in terms of the latter mainly OWS. After coffee and a snack we moved on to the Billy Childish show at Lehmann Maupin's 201 Chystie Street space. Billy's canvases have got bigger as he's got more successful but otherwise his painting hasn't changed much in 30 years. The clean white cube space and uncluttered hang also signalled that 30 years of hard graft have finally paid off to make him an 'overnight success'. Upstairs there was a nice display of Billy's records and publications… The layout was not dissimilar to my current White Columns show, which perhaps isn't surprising because Matthew Higgs curated both exhibitions.

With Mark I moved on to the NYU Grey Gallery back in Washington Square to see Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life… There were lots of familiar works but the tight curatorial categorisation seemed to work against the original iconoclasm of the movement. The curator Jacquelyn Baas has a reputation as being the hippest young expert on Fluxus and related currents, so I guess a lot of people like her methods of interpretation, but I didn't go for her division of works into categories such as 'change', 'danger', 'death', 'god', 'love', 'nothingness' and 'sex'. To undermine the conceit each category had a question mark after it – so I guess that's an admission it wasn't going to work for everyone, and for me the theming just got in the way of the work. Downstairs there was a selection of time related New York art to contextualise the Fluxus material. Between rapping and seeing two shows Mark and I had used up most of the day… and when my old Neoist/mail art pal went home, I wandered around downtown in the dark. I'd intended to go and see the Fluxus show at MOMA that day after not making it the day before, but I was fated to miss it…

After hanging in Hoboken on Wednesday morning, I took the PATH train to World Trade Center rather than along the 33rd Street branch. Going into the station amongst the construction on the Ground Zero site felt eerie, although I guess you'd get used to it if you did it all the time. For me it provided a stark reminder of the stupidity and futility of terrorism – and let's not forget that terrorism is always vanguardist and thus always anti-working class, regardless of who is responsible for it. I headed on up to Broadway and while there took another look at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration. It almost felt like I hadn't left since I was last there nearly three weeks earlier. Since I had my luggage with me – including the yoga mat for my headstand reading – a woman engaged me in a conversation about where I did yoga classes. Since I was getting hit on rather than participating in political debates, I split. After leaving OWS I checked into Hotel 91 on East Broadway, then rushed out to visit noted Ray Johnson expert Bill Wilson at his Chelsea home. Tom McGlynn had got there before me – after coffee and a long conversation with Wilson about Johnson and his playful aesthetic, the two of us headed north to call on Ben Morea. Among other things Tom and I talked to Ben about OWS. His take seemed to be that we weren't yet in a revolutionary situation and so right now we shouldn't act as if we are in one – the important thing was to push in that direction.

Tom and I moved on to the Sherrie Levine and David Smith opening at the Whitney. Smith's sculpture made us think of Cy Twombly on acid. The Levine show was a great hang and a real time trip back to the eighties. I liked both exhibitions but the opening party left me cold – like so much museum hospitality these days, it seemed aimed at trustees and businessmen who like the illusion of moving in the art world but wouldn't want to do it for real. The opening had attracted mostly suits and very few artists. A swift exit and a walk of a few blocks enabled us to hang with Nicholas Towasser of Dissident Books at Mid-Town Bagels. After drinks and a chat, Tom and I headed south again – me to East Broadway and Tom to Hoboken.

Thursday at noon I had to check in at Westport, the former strip club that was hosting my reading that night. I carried my yoga mat there without incident – I guess women don't hit on men in the streets of New York that much in the morning. We ran through the technical requirements of the night and everything was sorted in an hour-and-a-half. The venue was still laid out as a strip joint and all the readings were taking place from a catwalk with multi-coloured spot lights. I tried to make a meet with Lee Wells but our timings were out, so I wandered around downtown before going back to Hotel 91 to shower and rehearse before my show…. I got a call from Lynne Tillman who said she'd had to take a friend for emergency admission to the hospital, so she wasn't going to make the reading.

I left the hotel just after six and got to Westport on Clarkson Street before seven – having walked from one side of Manhattan to the other. With Performa curator Mark Beasley we had a hurried rehearsal of Lynne Tillman's text More Sex, with Sadie from the band Joe and Sadie's Trip reading it. She sounded good and it looked funny with Mark holding up a laptop for her to read from. We didn't have a printer so this was the only way the story could be accessed. Tom McGlynn and Ben Morea turned up early, so I chatted with them – and sorted out the reading order with my fellow performers Jarett Kobek and Ken Wark when they arrived.

At eight – and not a minute before – people were allowed into the venue. It quickly filled with hipsters and I shredded one of my novels, then stood on my head to give a recital from Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie – I always work from memory rather than with copies of my books. Jarret followed with a storming reading of a new piece and a section of his most recent novel Atta. He says it's difficult to read from his Semina novel Hoe #999 (edited by me), so he didn't do any of that – much as I'd have liked him to do so! Ken was up next and read from some of his expansive writings on the situationists, then ended with a great call and response piece about Occupy Wall Street. Sadie read Lynne's story from her new collection Some Day This Will Be Funny – with Mark holding the laptop. She was even better in front of an audience than on her run through. I finished off the readings with more party trick pieces – a passage from 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess with my ventriloquist puppet Mister Dog, and several pages from Defiant Pose (with OWS in mind). Then Joe and Sadie's Trip played raw and loud psychedelic music…

People seemed to have a good time, and a couple of women engaged me in conversations about yoga, since they'd seen me stand on my head – although I kick up with more force than a yogi would use…. The Performa crowd left for other places and by ten-thirty Westport was filling with a  different breed of hipster – the type who were regulars at the bar. My plan had been to move on to Ear for drinks – but that was closed for renovations, so we end up at Milady's at 162 Prince Street. I'm told this is one of the very last regular bars left south of Houston, and that it gives you more beer for your dollar than plusher places. Tom McGlynn, Tim Beckett and Charlotte Jackson got there before me – they'd called me on my cell to say Ear was closed and had already decided we should go to Prince Street instead. I arrived with Jarett Kobek, Eve Blackwater, Ken Wark and Christen Clifford. Lee Wells and Katie Hofstadter Winton came later. There was much drinking and talking – and, of course, Occupy Wall Street was among the subjects covered….

I walked back to Hotel 91, buying falafel on the way. As I waited for the lift to my room a woman asked me where I'd been doing yoga – she was with a friend and both were about my age. I told the two women I'd been doing a reading standing on my head on the catwalk of a strip club, which was why I had the mat with me. I don't think they believed me but they were obviously amused by what I was saying, and seemed disappointed that I got out of the lift before them without suggesting we go to my room or for a drink somewhere nearby…. I took the yoga mat back to White Columns the next morning and left it there. Matless I found myself left in peace by women looking to meet a new boyfriend.

On Friday I went for lunch with Lynne Tillman at Snice. Lynne's sick friend had improved in the hospital overnight. Lynne herself was on top form, talking in an upbeat way about her writing and her recent visit to Japan. I was really glad to catch up with Lynne – who I'd first met at a post-opening party for Susan Hiller when I'd been in New York back in 1989. Having done my gig and met up with Lynne, I felt my current mission in New York was accomplished. We had so much ground to cover in our conversation that I didn't even get around to talking to Lynne about Richard Nash – whose innovative approach to publishing seems to have done a lot to raise her profile. I'd invited Nash to my Performa reading but he told me he was out of town that night….

Next time I visit the Big Apple I'm gonna make sure I'm not carrying a yoga mat around with me. Being hit upon by around a dozen women who didn't know me from Adam because of my yoga mat – it's like a sign saying you're a 'sensitive' man – rather ruined my attempts at raising my state of consciousness through self-induced paranoia…. I just didn't feel lonely and alienated enough after being flirted with to get into the proper noir mood! Oh well, here's to me actually achieving a heightened state of awareness next time I'm in the city!

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

How To Make Money Fast!

"How To Make Money Fast" is just one of thousands of spam comments my filter prevented from being posted on this blog. If the spammer in question actually knew a good way of making money fast, it's unlikely they'd be telling other people about it. My filter is also repeatedly blocking spam comments from someone offering to write cheap blog posts for me and my readers. This seems to rather miss the fact that I prefer to put my own spin on shit – not to mention that with all the spam that comes my way, I've more than enough material from which I can write blogs fast, so I don't need to pay someone else to do it for me. I could probably spend hours taking the piss out of the spammer offering to add Facebook fans to profiles on that platform… Fake fans aren't about to bring anyone fame or money… and ultimately it's more satisfying to engage with people than have them look up to you for no good reason. The star/fan relationship ain't exactly a groove sensation – and using social media to replicate it online seems to completely miss the point of web 2.o, which is that it should give people the opportunity to interact on a more equal footing.

During my spam deletion process, I tend to pay slightly more attention to those comments offering search engine optimisation services (SEO) and free backlinks, than virtual pitches for lawyers. plumbers, escorts, watches, baby clothes, handbags, diets and designer shoes etc. However I wouldn't click on SEO cowboy links or allow their outrageous claims to appear on my blog – because they're likely to lead to some virus infested scam site. What all this bot-driven 'activity' ultimately reveals is the desperation among those who think social media is the new Klondike and that they're about to strike gold. As I've said before, focusing on content will ultimately result in getting people to engage with a site – building links may raise you very slightly up some search engine rankings, but it doesn't necessarily lead to anyone looking at what's on your pages. Content is still king and ninety-nine percent of the time monetisation is a pipe dream – which is one of a number of reasons why there are no ads here!

If you still want to make money fast you'd probably do better ram-raiding a jewellery store.

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

Occupy London & Richard Chartres – or Let's Bash The Bishop!

The Corporation of London and their representatives in the Church of England look all set to evict the Occupy London encampment sometime this week. For anyone approaching the Occupy London protest from the east along St Paul's Churchyard, the sight of the tents with a branch of camping equipment shop Blacks also in clear view is probably enough to raise a chuckle. The manager of Blacks couldn't have arranged a better advert for the store's winter sale. Less hilarious is the effect of The Church of England on the protest. When I was down there on Saturday, some religious nutcase was banging on and on about how she'd become a more effective activist after finding Jesus five years earlier. Rather than concentrating on real issues, Occupy London has at times been diverted into debates that are about as relevant to the working class as theological hair-splitting about 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?'

That said, these arguments are not simply turning the focus away from how the City of London operates, they're also causing splits in the utterly repugnant Church of England. First Dr Giles Fraser resigned from his post at St Paul's Cathedral (canon chancellor), and he's now been followed by the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles (the dean). Despite their insane religious delusions, these characters are apparently more sympathetic to anti-capitalist protests than the likes of the power mad and equally bonkers Richard Chartres (Bishop of London). Chartres may claim he is sympathetic to Occupy London's views but he remains hard-line about removing their camp from outside St Paul's precisely because his interests are completely aligned to those of both the City of London and the parasitic House of Windsor. Understanding that Chartres' manoeuvres are necessary if he is to retain the support of his influential City backers goes a long way towards explaining the actions of this establishment toady. The City operates through unofficial ambassadors like Chartres, who it seeks to place in positions of power.

Richard Chartres (born 11 July 1947) has been Bishop of London since 1995. Before this appointment he was Bishop of Stepney (1992–1995) and Gresham Professor of Divinity (1987–1992). Gresham College is 'an institution of higher learning' located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in the City of London. It was founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham (the founder of the stock exchange). Gresham professorships are handed out to City of London insiders. During a lecture Chartres gave on the History of Gresham College at Barnard's Inn Hall, he described the institution as a 'magical island like Atlantis'  which disappeared and re-emerged from the ocean. This was a reference both to the Invisible College of the Rosicrucians and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. In a non-Gresham lecture in east London a few years later, Chartres let slip he wanted to build a church in the pyramid at the top of Canary Wharf. Chartres may or may not be a genuine 'Christian', but he's clearly influenced by barking mad occult ideas, and will invoke them to please his influential City of London friends.

Chartres was born in Ware, Hertfordshire  and educated at Hertford Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he read history). After that he went on to study at Cuddesdon and Lincoln theological colleges. Chartres was ordained as a priest in 1974. He was chaplain to Robert Runcie, then Bishop of St Albans and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Subsequently he's sucked up to the British royal family, and his faux 'green' church campaigns seem designed to make him attractive to ultra-reactionary tossers like Prince Charles. In 1997 he was one of the executors of the will of Princess Diana and he also delivered the address at her memorial service in 2007. He confirmed Prince William. On 12 September 2009 he presided at the marriage of Lord Frederick Windsor to actress Sophie Winkleman at the Chapel Royal in Hampton Court Palace. More recently he preached the sermon at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Here's how Wikipedia describes Chartres in relation to Occupy London: "In October 2011, the Occupy London group camped in front of St Paul's Cathedral in order to protest at the use of taxpayers' money to reward bankers who were perceived to have initiated the financial crises leading to draconian cuts in public spending which had affected the poorest hardest. Canon Giles Fraser requested the police to withdraw and condoned the actions of the demonstrators. This was in stark contrast to Chartres who wanted the protesters to leave – he offered to mediate between the demonstrators and a panel of representatives from the financial sector but only if the protesters disbanded – he also stated he was considering asking the police to evict the demonstrators – this prompted Canon Fraser to resign on the grounds that he could not condone violence against peaceful demonstrators."

From the above it should be obvious that Richard Chartres is a greedy and ambitious toe-rag who is acting in the interests of the City of London and the British establishment. His offer to mediate between protesters and the financial sector is a sick joke. Anti-capitalists shouldn't trust Chartres any further than they can throw him. He's a City of London puppet. It's high time some real pressure was put on wankers like Chartres who act as secret ambassadors for The City. If we really want to Occupy London then we need to bash this bishop!

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

10 Art Works You Must Jerk Off Over Before You Die!

In 2001 when Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art was on at the Hayward Gallery, a female visitor to the show walked into a room in which Tadasu Takamine's Inertia was being shown only to discover a man jerking off to the projection. The woman left and complained to the gallery, but by the time security got there the man had disappeared. The work was recently re-shown at the Icon Gallery in Birmingham, I don't know if anyone was caught wanking off to the piece there, but the description of it on the Icon website illustrates you'd have to be seriously sad to do so: "Inertia (1998) involves the uneasy combination of a young woman and a bullet train. She is shown close-up and feet first on top of a carriage while the rest of the world flashes past. A powerful electric hum dramatises her fruitless attempts to push her dress down over her legs against the force of the wind; the situation is intensely sexual, unstoppable and exhilarating, clearly drawn from classic fetishism and nightmare scenarios." You'd have to be really unimaginative to jerk off over something as clichéd as that – and especially in a public place! So in the interests of public education, I bring you 10 art works you must jerk off over before you die!

1. The One & The Many by Stewart Home. 72 copies of Home's novel Down & Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton factory wrapped in three packets and arranged as a sculpture. The work is for sale at $480 and has an immediate retail value of $720 since the books sell at $10 each. Anyone buying the work needs to choose between breaking up the sculpture and realising an immediate profit by selling the books at their retail price, or keeping it as it is and speculating on it greatly rising in value thanks to its aesthetic merits. On show at White Columns in New York until 19 November. This one would be perfect for a circle jerk. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours – so that the general public can enjoy the work in peace.

2. Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. A half length portrait famous thanks to the sitter's smile. It has been widely rumoured that the model is in fact Leonardo da Vinci in drag, so this one is perfect as a fetish object for all you gender benders out there. Forget about the original, jerk off over a reproduction.

3. Art Strike Bed by Stewart Home. After Home went on art strike between 1990-1993, the first thing he showed in a gallery for his comeback was a bed – which acted as a symbol of his lack of activity during the art strike. He didn't show the bed he slept on during the art strike, and he's shown various different beds as 'the' Art Strike Bed, since he wants the work to be radically inauthentic. Since you've no doubt jerked off on a bed innumerable times, why not wank off over this one! On show right now at White Columns in Manhattan. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.

4. Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian. Mainstream pornography dulls the brain with literal images. Radical pornography is abstract and requires the stimulus of a healthy imagination in order for you to get off on it. This famous abstract by Mondrian is a perfect example of that. Forget about the original, jerk off over a reproduction for that extra ersatz/seminal experience.

5. Becoming (M)other by Stewart Home & Chris Dorley-Brown. In 2004 Home took his mother's 1966 modelling portfolio and reposed the pictures with photographer Chris Dorley-Brown. The two sets of images – of Home's mother (Julia Callan-Thompson aged 22 in her photos) and her son (Stewart Home aged 42 in his photos) – were then morphed together to create an inter-generational & cross-gender composite. Like the Mona Lisa, this is another work that will appeal to gender benders of all ages, as well as the bi-curious. Currently on show at White Columns in New York. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.

6. White On White by Kazimir Malevich. White stains could only add to the appeal of this classic work of Suprematist abstraction! Judging by the immediate critical reception, Malevich was already wanking in the wind when he made this painting! Forget about the original, use a reproduction to jerk off over. But if you wanna see a really dirty art work use Black On Black by the same artist, which you'll totally ruin by adding white!

7. Heroin Is The Opiate Of The People by Stewart Home. Wall drawing of a man injecting himself with skag. The image ain't attractive so getting off over this one will prove you're a hardcore pervert! On show at White Columns in Manhattan until 19 November. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.

8. After Walker Evans by Sherrie Levine. Levine re-shot well known Walker Evans photographs from an exhibition catalogue and presented them as her own artwork with no manipulation of the images. The Evans photographs are considered by some to be a quintessential record of the rural American poor during the great depression. The Walker Evans estate saw these works by Levine as an infringement of their copyrights, and acquired them to forestall their circulation. You don't need Levine re-makes to jerk off over these pieces, just get a decent Walker Evans catalogue and pretend Sherrie has re-done the work for you!

9. Prostitution II by Stewart Home. In the 1970s Cosey Fanni Tutti worked as a model for pornographic magazines and announced that her sex images were performance art. In 1996 – a few years before the current revival of interest in Tutti – Home re-shot a series of her magazine spreads onto Polaroid not merely as an act of appropriation, but also to counteract the fallacious arguments of various self-styled art critics who claimed that in the 1970s British women artists adhered to 'feminist propriety'. On show at White Columns in New York right now. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.

10. Samo Is Dead by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Graffiti announcing the end of the Samo Project was painted on walls in Soho, Manhattan, in 1979. You don't need to find traces of the original graffiti, a photograph of it will do for a wank!

Needless to say there is far more in my White Columns show Again A Time Machine: A Stewart Home Retrospective than the five works described here – and it's all worth jerking off over. The show is on until 19 November – make sure you catch it! White Columns, 320 West 13th Street (enter on Horatio Street, between Hudson and 8th Avenue), New York, NY 10014, USA.

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

Time Slip At The Electric Ballroom In Camden

Until last night I hadn't been to The Electric Ballroom in Camden for over 30 years. If you are obsessed by 70s English punk rock then the last time I'd gone might be considered an historic occasion. It was the last day of 1979 and the final time the old pre-pop Adam and the Ants played live, as well as being the swansong performance by the original line-up of The Lurkers. I don't remember who else was on the bill, but I do recall getting belted by two bouncers. They didn't throw me out, they were labouring under the mistaken impression that some girl who was giving Adam Ant a hard time was there with me – and being 'gentlemen' they didn't want to hit a lady, so walloped me because they wrongly assumed I was her boyfriend. When I did leave at the end of the night I got hassled by some cops who said it was obvious from the blood on my clothes that I'd been fighting. The filth told me the next time they caught me in a similar state they'd nick me. I insisted I'd had my head turned as I was speaking to someone and had accidentally walked into a door; this wasn't true and I wasn't particularly surprised the old bill didn't believe me – they must have heard variations on that particular story a million times…

I'd never had much luck at The Electric Ballroom. On another occasion I'd gone to see The Brian James All Stars after that guitarist had quit the original Damned – and had the misfortune to accidentally catch one of the shittiest acts of the seventies. One of the advertised support bands for Brian James was Squeeze but their van broke down, so their management put The Police on instead. This was in 1978 and well before The Police had hit records. You knew any band called The Police were gonna suck before you even heard 'em; and of course they were truly awful, because only a bunch of utter wankers would name their act after the filth. The fifty or so punters in the venue – including me – turned their backs on the band and went to the bar at the back of the hall for a drink. The Police were completely ignored by an audience who just wanted Sting and his poxy mates to get off stage.

Things got off to a bad start last night too. I'd been to an art talk near Bishopsgate first, and to say the Robin Day chairs the audience there had been sitting on were unergonomic would be a major understatement. Arriving in Camden I realised I hadn't eaten, so I got a take-out falafel sandwich. This was a mistake that took me right back to the seventies via my memories of how appallingly bad food tended to be in London when I was teenage. I expected to get the falafel in pita bread with salad, but it came in a French stick with chili dressing and one slice of tomato, and nothing else! The overall quality of food in London has improved massively over the past 30 odd years – it seemed I had fallen through a time slip.

Arriving at The Electric Ballroom it was good to be ushered in by Jim Driver, who was meeting and greeting those like me who were down on the guest list. I didn't know anything about the band who were playing, I hadn't seen Jim in a while and he'd sent me a message saying I should come to the Ballroom as he was promoting a Halloween party special and I'd enjoy it. I trusted Jim's musical taste because at one point he'd managed Geno Washington. The band turned out to be Gandalf Murphy & The Slambovian Circus of Dreams – a New York folk rock act with a heavy sprinkling of prog on top. Back in the 70s when I paid more attention to rock music, the kind of American acts I dug when I saw them over here were the likes of The Dead Boys, The Dictators, Destroy All Monsters and Pure Hell – I got more sophisticated in the 80s, with my taste in live American music switching to the likes of Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers.

Watching Gandalf Murphy at the Electric Ballroom last night you could be forgiven for thinking that punk hadn't yet happened – an impression that was reinforced when the band did The Stones Gimmie Shelter as an encore. Half the audience were dressed up as pirates and they seemed to be having a ball…. but I was left wishing that rather than falling through a time slip to a hippie gig circa 1974, I'd found myself in  1972 grooving to Major Lance at The Torch in Stoke-On-Trent! I couldn't enjoy Gandalf Murphy's London Halloween show because there were too many punk ghosts haunting me at the Electric Ballroom. Their brand of psychedelic folk with tinges of country struck me as representing everything late-70s punk set out to destroy – and simultaneously the complete antithesis of all the stomping sixties mod and soul sounds I still love too!

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

Back In The New York Groove!

I hadn't been to New York in 16 years so my sojourn there last week proved a trip! Somehow it didn't surprise me that I should find myself leaving from Gate 23 of Heathrow Airport's Terminal 4 on Monday 17 October. Even more predictably I wasn't interested in any of the in-flight movies, so I didn't watch them. The choice of on-board music was pretty lame too…. although they did have Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles 'greatest hits' albums, so I gave those a spin – and otherwise just left Aretha Franklin's classic 1968 platter Aretha Now on repeat play. Arriving at Newark I took the air train to Penn Station in Manhattan. Gavin Everall – who'd booked my flight and hotel – said I could walk to the accommodation from the station. I enjoy proving a point, so I covered the seventy or so blocks to 103rd street on foot, and with my luggage slowing me it only took about ninety minutes.

The Marrakesh Hotel was cheaper than most other accommodation in Manhattan for a reason – in places the carpet was worn through and the bare brick work in my room had crumbled badly. When I opened the blind I had a delightful view of a brick wall about two feet from my window. The Moroccan themed decoration in the hotel was at best half-hearted, but then I guess the fact that the place was way cheaper than your average New York perch made up for that. Even the Guest Safety Tips I was handed with my key were old school: "Always use the deadbolt. Secure valuables. Report suspicious persons or acts. Never open door prior to verifying ID." So if you want a taste of old New York, then The Marrakesh may be the place for you – although unlike when I was staying in downtown Rio about seven years ago, I didn't actually spot any armed muggers in the corridors. I arrived at the hotel around midnight, read for an hour, then went to sleep.

I woke about 7am and got myself together before strolling down to White Columns on Horatio Street. This was an amble of about ninety blocks but without luggage I was able to cover the distance a little faster than my seventy block power walk of the night before. When I arrived at White Columns, director Matthew Higgs introduced me to his crew and then took me out for coffee at Snice – where I could get a double espresso rather than the too weak for me American  diner coffee. I then unpacked the boxes of material for the exhibition that had been sent from London, and aside from a Mexican lunch with Matthew, worked through until about 6pm on starting to arrange the show.

I decided to walk back to the hotel and detoured into a video shop on the way – I hadn't looked closely at the TV set up in the hotel and wrongly thought that like the last hotel I'd been in (west country in England), there was a DVD player. The store I went into was chock-full of kung fu movies priced at less than ten bucks a pop – lots of old school classics such as The Shadow Boxer (AKA Spiritual Boxer II), Backalley Princes (with Angela Mao and Carter Wong), Return To The 36 Chambers (AKA Return of the Master Killer), The Kung Fu Lizard (with Lo Lieh), and Enter The Fat Dragon (with Sammo Hung). In the end I picked up Bruce Lee & I, a notorious piece of Brucesploitation with his mistress Betty Ting Pei playing herself in a particularly shameless piece of trash made shortly after Lee's death. After that I went to an AT&T store to sort out a cell phone for while I was in the USA. I kept wandering north but not always in a straight line. I stopped for some chow and still made it back to the hotel before 9pm. Discovering there was no DVD player, I tried the TV channels but all I could get without paying for a movie on the hotel system was a New York educational/community station (running a History Detective programme about the evolution of Ronald MacDonald's clown costume) and an old episode of Cheers. So I read until one and then caught another full six hours sleep.

When I exited the hotel on Wednesday morning it was pissing with rain. Still I decided to walk to the gallery, and as I did this I made calls to my friends on my mobile, which I'd set up before leaving the hotel. Strolling south down Amsterdam Avenue with everything looking wet and grey, and very aware that the streets were laid out in grids, I started fooling myself into thinking I was taking a psychogeographical trip around Glasgow. When I got to White Columns someone had put a huge plastic bucket beside the door, where I deposited my umbrella alongside many others. I worked away steadily at putting up my show, took lunch on my own but during shorter breaks I was cracking jokes with Matthew's White Columns team – Amie Scally, Carolyn Lockhart and Jeff Eaton.

My old mate Tom McGlynn – a New York artist I've known since the mid-80s – turned up mid-afternoon and we went for a coffee at Snice. After that, Matthew and I continued to work on my show. Around 6pm Gavin Everall appeared with some more of my material from London. He left to check into the same hotel as me, and I got back on with organising my exhibition until Tom McGlynn came back to the gallery at eight. Leaving Matthew working on my show alone, I headed off to Brooklyn with Tom to catch Jarett Kobek giving a presentation of his new novel Atta at the Issue Project Room on 3rd Street. At the space we hooked up with Simon Critchley and Gavin Everall. Gavin did a Q&A with Jarett after the main presentation. Then it was on to some Brooklyn bar for drinks and a chin-wag with Tom, Gavin and Simon. The talk was good, the hardcore punk rock being played in the bar was lousy.

Thursday morning found me back at White Columns working on my show – once again I power walked the ninety blocks after a full six hours sleep. By Thursday gallery technician Ian Holman was hanging some of the material I'd arranged by placing it on the floor beneath where I wanted it on the wall; while Amie, Jeff and Matthew were also helping out with various aspects of my installation. When Gavin turned up I went for lunch with him at Snice, then it was back to work for me. Gavin went off and when he came back we headed up to the Chelsea Museum for a performance of Aldo Tambellini's Black Zero – a recreation of a happening performed by Group Center several times between 1963 and 1965.

Black Zero featured some recorded sounds, including the voice of poet Calvin C. Hernton who couldn't be there in person because he was dead. One of the improvised elements was Henry Grimes on double bass and Ben Morea on power tools adapted as musical instruments – and they were fabulous together! There were film projections all over the place and a very good modern dancer, who amid apocalyptic verse about racism and nuclear holocaust, eventually fell down into an erotic death pose: at this point Tambellini entered the stage area with a pen knife and popped a balloon onto which film was being projected, and that was the end of the performance. I was knocked out by the event, describing it in words really doesn't do it justice. Afterwards I went for a drink with Tim Beckett, who I'd arranged to meet at the Black Zero event but he'd been delayed and missed it.

I didn't need to go into White Columns early on the Friday as the show was coming together nicely, and Matthew wanted to get on with some final touches on his own. After breakfast in a diner with Gavin – where I got into a good humoured argument with a waitress over the relative merits of the Mets and the Yankees -  I gave Ben Morea a call and we hauled our asses over to his tiny Manhattan apartment. We took a look through a selection of Ben's recent paintings, he does them in Colorado where he lives most of the time – they're Zen-like abstracts which he's been doing since 1982, and very different from the darker pictures he made in the sixties prior to the founding of Black Mask. After we'd rapped a bit, we went out for coffee and further talk – with the subject matter ranging from Ben's friendship with Valerie Solanas to the current activism going on around Occupy Wall Street. I'd spent a week with Ben in Europe during the summer, so we also did a bit of catching up.

Gavin and I left Ben to check out what was happening at the gallery. Overall I was very happy with how Matthew had finished the installation, but wanted to make one small change which he agreed to. Then it was around the corner to Snice for lunch with Ken Wark and a conversation covering everything from the recent travels of those present through to the political situation in New York and elsewhere. After checking in at White Columns and finding I wasn't needed, Gavin and I headed for Occupy Wall Street. There was a good atmosphere and we picked up all the literature we could. Everyone was friendly and I had brief conversations with kids in their teens and twenties through to a middle aged rank-and-file member of the CWA (Communication Workers of America). The groups involved were really diverse, but then I guess that's the nature of a broad movement. It looked to me like the beefy union members who'd got involved had played a key role in putting the authorities off using force to break up the demonstration. While I was at Occupy Wall Street, I got a call from Lee Wells who'd shown pieces of mine in group exhibitions in the New York area in the past, so we walked around to his nearby office for coffee and a chat.

Heading back up to White Columns on Horatio Street we were early for my opening, so I had a drink with Gavin in The Art Bar opposite Snice. When we went to the private view it filled up quickly and when I tried to talk with various friends like Tom McGlynn, Lynne Tillman and Hari Kunzru, I was constantly pulled away to meet new people. We went back to The Art Bar for drinks after the opening. I was told David Byrne had been inspecting my work very closely, and a lot of critics had turned up including Hal Foster. I hadn't clocked these people but then that isn't surprising since the place was packed and I don't know what they look like. Indeed the opening was so busy that I even failed to clock some of the people I knew from London – such as Mike Sperlinger, who I learnt later was doing his own event in NYC. It's a shame I didn't get to speak to everyone I know, but I guess that's showbiz…. Anyway, after a generous helping of Talisker in The Art Bar, it was back to the hotel on the subway.

Saturday morning I just wandered around Manhattan, and as I walked I was calling up a few friends for some catch up, including Darius James who hadn't been able to make it into town while I was there. I was basically heading south, so that by 2pm I was at Apexart, 291 Church Street, for a series of readings being promoted under the banner Mad As Hell! Given this was really close to Occupy Wall Street I'd assumed it was going to be an afternoon of stories based around current political activism. Instead it turned out to be inspired much more by Network, a movie I haven't seen for years, with stories about anger rather than politics. I saw Dale Peck, Elissa Schappell, John Haskell, Patrick McGrath and Lynne Tillman read. I was really curious to see Eileen Myles but the reading started late and I had to get to White Columns for 4pm, so I had to miss her. Tillman was for me the highlight – her sharp but spare prose and incredible wit really make her stand out from most other writers.

Back at the gallery I was doing a reading with Kenneth Goldsmith. Kenny was way more than a warm up, he presented me with the challenge of matching and attempting to better his riotous spoken word act. So I started by standing on my head and reading from Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie, then proceeded to shred a copy of my novel Down & Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton, and finished up by rapping about the work I had in the show. It was another packed event but I managed to catch up – often too briefly – with some old NYC friends like mail artist Mark Bloch. Afterwards a crowd of us moved on to The Art Bar. As it got later and people started drifting off, I decided to walk to the upper west side with Esther Leslie, who was over from London and staying on 79th Street. I carried on to 103rd by foot, reaching The Marrakesh Hotel sometime after midnight. I was feeling great thanks to both a successful show and the extremely large shots of Talisker served in The Art Bar.

On Sunday morning I walked around the upper west side, before heading to White Columns to do an interview with Aimee Walleston from Art In America. I'd planned to hook up with Tom McGlynn after this, but when I called him he'd was unexpectedly tied up at home, so I wandered around downtown on my tod until it was time to go to the airport. I really couldn't believe how much dowtown had changed since I'd last visited 16 years before. Streets like Christopher and Bleecker were unrecognisable from how I'd first encountered them at the end of the 1980s, they'd been completely gentrified. Canal Street seemed to retain more of the atmosphere from the old days than anywhere else I went… And while it is in the nature of cities to change, it is always gonna be better when that change is directed by the working class rather than the rich! So we still need a new urbanism!

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

 

10 Reasons Not To Blog

1. These days most of those surfing the web prefer reading status updates to blogs – it takes less time.

2. You can't see the trees because of the astroturf. Likewise, you'll get way more link spam than comments from people who've actually read your content.

3. If you write something over 800 words in length, virtually no one will reach the end.

4. To get a point across you have to keep repeating it, which is boring after a while.

5. No one is interested in what you've got to say – not even your mom (although she'll be monitoring your web activity because she suspects you're taking drugs and wants 'proof' before she confronts you about it).

6. People are conditioned for instant gratification and just click through to a new page every few seconds.

7. Technorati really sucks – the rss feeds they take from blogs like this get screwed around at their end and the posts don't show up on their site.

8. No one trusts the views of bloggers because of the way PR companies have attempted to manipulate this medium.

9. Sometimes it's really difficult to even think of ten points to create a formula blog, and you waste an hour on a post instead of getting it done in five minutes.

10. Blogs have gone out of fashion because they are like so noughties.

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

No, Or Santiago Sierra's Latest Art World 'Prank'

Santiago Sierra (b. 1966, Madrid) is well known for his cruel and nihilistic pranks. To  save myself the effort of writing very much about Sierra (whose work is tedious but simultaneously serves to illustrate the complete decomposition of the institution of art), I've taken the following from a Wikipedia page about him: "Some of Sierra's most famous works have involved paying a man to live behind a brick wall for 15 days, paying Iraqi immigrants to wear protective clothing and be coated in hardening polyetherane foam as "free form" sculptures, blocking the entrance of Lisson Gallery with a metal wall on opening night, sealing the entrance of the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, only to allow Spanish citizens in to see an exhibition of left over pieces of the previous year's exhibition… In 2006, he provoked controversy with his installation "245 cubic metres", a gas chamber created inside a former synagogue in Pulheim Germany."

Sierra's cynicism and inhumanity are well illustrated by the examples above. He titillates the rich by locking them out of galleries, whereas when it comes to the wretched of the earth, Sierra delights in degrading them by providing a meagre wage in exchange for the performance of boring and humiliating tasks. Sierra's treatment of those he hires demonstrates not just his repugnant inhumanity – his success as an artist is also based on some extremely cynical calculations about exactly what types of degradation inflicted upon the poor will most appeal to rich collectors.

As an adjunct to the Frieze Art Fair in London, Sierra's new film No was screened last night to an invited audience at The Prince Charles Cinema just of Leicester Square. The promotion for the movie ran like this: "NO, Global Tour, 2011 A film by Santiago Sierra, Directed by Santiago Sierra, Filmed by Diego Santome, black and white film, 120 minutes. Santiago Sierra('s)… recent work, NO, GLOBAL TOUR, consists of the manufacture and transportation of two monumental sculptures in the form of the word "NO", travelling through different territories on a flatbed truck. The NO, GLOBAL TOUR has resulted in a feature film that documents the passage of this large NO through various world cities… The film, full of all manner of references, does not aim for surprise but thought. Using the strict black and white that characterises his work, and with a soundtrack limited to a careful treatment of incidental sound, the film revitalises the road movie genre through a productive encounter with other languages and disciplines."

The information that came with my invitation to the free screening was, of course, hype (as is the claim – sometimes made about Sierra – that his work is in some way 'anti-capitalist'). Free beer and popcorn were a further enticement to attend. Rather than provoking 'thought', NO looked like someone had randomly strung together a bunch out-takes from one of Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit's TV movies – and with results that were far less enticing than those achieved by this pair of London psychogeographers. I went to the screening with the intention of watching the reaction of the audience, who looked bored shitless after ten minutes. Most had walked out before the end of the movie. I presume this is what Sierra wanted and that he's more than happy with this result. For the rest of us NO is simply a bit of a yawn. The lettrists achieved far more with their deliberately boring films of the early-1950s, and if you want to be alienated in style then stick with the output of the French avant-garde of sixty-odd years ago. Sierra is strictly for the idle rich, and hopefully they won't be with us for much longer.

And while you're at it don't forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!