Page 1268 – Cherwell

Review: Neil Young – Storytone

Culture

Lata Nobes

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7th November 2014

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Three Stars

In a bold move, the songs on Neil Young’s new album Storytone are being released alongside arrangements for 91-piece orchestra and choir. Some of the songs benefit from the orchestral arrangement, but for others it removes the delight of their simplicity.

In ‘Glimmer’, for example, the orchestral introduction is magically atmospheric, but when Young’s voice enters his thin, off-key sound breaks the spell. In ‘Who’s Going to Stand Up’ the choir sings the words of the chorus: “Who’s gonna stand up to save the Earth? / Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?” It’s probably meant to sound like an inspirational rally, but the effect is marred by the inexpert lyricism.

Paradoxically, the tracks in which the orchestra has the most positive effect are those that are led by Young’s guitar. In ‘When I Watch You Sleeping’, a delicately-picked guitar line leads the music, while the strings evoke a gentle lullaby.

Listening to the solo versions changed my view of the album. In the orchestral arrangements, much of the lyric-writing comes across as clunky, yet in the piano versions it somehow works. In the solo version of ‘Plastic Flowers’, for example, there is an emotional quality to the singing that is entirely new.

Young’s voice, however, is ultimately not able to match the quality of his orchestral arrangement. At the end of the album, I promptly switched on Harvest and breathed a sigh of relief.

Review: Deptford Goth – Songs

Culture

Luke Barratt

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7th November 2014

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Two Stars

The last album from Daniel Woolhouse, aka Deptford Goth, was a mélange of synths rising and falling, drum beats effortlessly switching time signature and vocals blending into the music like an extra instrument. Woolhouse’s immersive, involving sound on Life After Defo lent depth to lyrics, which, though of mixed quality, revealed occasional shimmering moments of insight.

Songs is a more pedestrian album, in the vein of Overgrown James Blake rather than Bat For Lashes. Woolhouse has now given his vocals more prominence, but it doesn’t quite come off.

While James Blake’s piercing croon cuts through minimal backing music like a hot diamond through ice, Deptford Goth sounds a bit more like he’s melting. ‘Lovers’ has none of the lyrical intrigue of previous hit ‘Feel Real’, and songs like ‘Do Exist’ come across merely as filler.

There are highlights, though. ‘We Symbolise’ sees Woolhouse take to the piano and, as interweaving synths blend behind him, push out wonderfully baffling, but beautifully tragic, lyrics. “I fell down / Things all look bad to me / Where can I go?”.

For some reason, lead single ‘Two Hearts’ doesn’t come in until the album is almost over. With its hypnotic rhythm and dreamy synths, it lulls and it soothes. “Love is enough,” says the refrain. This album is not. And what sort of a name is Songs, anyway?

St John’s ban mobile phones in hall

News

Tom Calver

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7th November 2014

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St John’s students will be “removed” by staff if they use their mobile phones during formal dinner, the College’s Senior Dean has declared.

An email sent on Monday morning followed complaints from “senior members and their guests” about junior members using their phones during dinner, and has prompted mixed reactions from students, with one complaining that the “tone” of the email “ties in with a lot of other issues about the general attitude towards undergraduates”.

Senior Dean William Whyte told students, “Following a number of complaints from senior members and their guests, the Senior dean has been asked to remind junior members that mobile telephones may not be used in hall during dinner for anything but calls of the utmost urgency. They must also be switched to silent mode.

“Telephones and other hand-held devices should likewise never be used for texting or playing games in hall. Staff have been instructed to remove anyone from dinner found to be repeatedly transgressing these rules.”

Responding to the email, St John’s student Ella Gough told Cherwell, “While I understand that it can be annoying or antisocial to have the person next to you texting at the table, as far as I know there is no specific college policy against it, and I think the tone of the email was heavy-handed. I also wonder why guests of senior staff have any say whatsoever in what members of the JCR and MCR of this college choose to do. They don’t even go here.”

St John’s students have also heavily debated the issue on their JCR Facebook page. Maham Faisal Khan explained that one of the main problems he had with the email was “the tone with which junior members are addressed”.

He went on to say, “I think that it ties in with a lot of other issues about the general attitude towards undergraduates.”

A first year lawyer also told Cherwell, “If the College is going to try and makes us live in the 18th century with gowns I guess it might as well go the whole way!”

Siding with the senior fellows, however, Ruth Maclean commented on the Facebook page, “The senior fellows can lay down whatever code of conduct they see fit I guess […] I don’t actually think it’s that unreasonable — it is actually really annoying the amount people use their phones in hall when it’s meant to be a social occasion — it’s just quite rude at the dinner table sometimes.”

Danny Waldman, one of three candidates for the College’s JCR president position, was also sympathetic with the Senior Dean, explaining, “people go to formal for the Oxford experience so it is fair enough, but it wouldn’t be reasonable if they introduced it for informal hall.”

Dominik Peters commented, “I don’t like how they haven’t given a reason for this policy — but as I know our buttery staff, this rule will never be enforced, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

The College did not reply to our request for comment, while the St John’s JCR President could not be reached.

Race for OUSU Presidency begins

News

Tom Calver

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7th November 2014

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OUSU Elections Nominations closed yesterday, with Adam Roberts (Wadham), Becky Howe (Pembroke), and Will Obeney (Regent’s Park) all running for President.

Obeney is running as part of ‘For Oxford’ with Flora Sheldon and Nick Cooper (both from St John’s), with their slate focusing on reducing disparities between colleges in terms of academic provision, accommodation, and funding.

Howe, meanwhile, is running with ‘Team ABC’, alongside Cat Jones (Pembroke) and Ali Lennon (St John’s), prioritising a review of the student welfare system, and tackling Oxford’s high living costs.

Roberts is running independently, and is proposing to hold a vote every year on what students think OUSU’s policies should be.

Current OUSU President Louis Trup commented, “These elections look like they will be interesting. I love interesting elections. Hopefully the key issues prioritised by candidates will lead to interesting debate. I love interesting debate. All in all, it’s a great time to be alive.”

There were initially going to be four presidential candidates, but Lady Margaret Hall’s Sam Wiseman announced his withdrawal to Cherwell shortly after the list was released. Wiseman originally presented himself as a ‘joke candidate’, with his pledges including the construction of an international airport at Oxford.

OUSU Returning Officer Martine Wauben confirmed, “Sam has indeed told me of his intention to withdraw: this withdrawal won’t be final until he comes into the OUSU offices in person to do so, but I can confirm he at least intends to do so.”

Nick Cooper and Wadham’s Danny Zajarias-Fainsod are running for VP for Graduates, while New’s Emily Silcock is running for VP for Charities & Community unopposed.

Ali Lennon (St John’s), running for VP for Welfare & Equal Opportunities, and Wadham’s Lucy Delaney (Wadham), running for VP for Women, are also unopposed.

The office of Vice-President (VP) for Access and Academic Affairs is, however, hotly contested, with four candidates running for the position. Flora Sheldon (St John’s) is standing with ‘For Oxford’ slate. In her manifesto, she tells voters she is running because, “I want an Oxford where everyone can achieve their academic potential regardless of background.”

Cat Jones (Pembroke), campaigning with Howe’s ‘Team ABC’ slate, explains in her manifesto, “I want to help to make the University of Oxford accessible to the brightest students regardless of background, and to ensure it is a place where everyone can thrive academically once here.”

Greg Auger, an independent, is also standing. Explaining his reasons for running, Auger writes, “I want to help change our university for the better… I would love to use my knowledge and passion to make Oxford better for us all.”

Meanwhile Eden Bailey, from Magdalen, is running for the ‘Right to Education’ slate, which does not include a candidate for President. In her manifesto, Bailey elaborates, “I want to make education at Oxford accessible and relevant to more students, regardless of identity or circumstance.”

Although there are a range of independent candidates, as well as For Oxford and Right to Education nominees, running for Part Time Executive positions, several positions currently have no candidates, including Graduation Welfare Officer, Rent and Accommodation Officer, and International Students Officer.

Speaking to Cherwell, former NUS Delegate Jack Matthews commented, “It is particularly disappointing that the key representative positions of NUS Delegate and Student Trustee will be elected unopposed. At this key juncture in both OUSU Governance and the run up to the General Election, it is more important than ever that these essential positions are occupied by our brightest and best.”

Presidential candidate Becky Howe, a historian and former JCR President, cites her work in resolving the Pembroke rugby email controversy as one of the successes of her JCR Presidency, alongside negotiating a “much-needed rent and charges deal”.

Her manifesto states, “I want OUSU to focus on the issues which effect students the most; flawed welfare systems, the cost of living, and divisions within our university community. I want to promote a happy, healthy, and cohesive Oxford.”

Commenting to Cherwell on her reasons for running, Howe explained that as JCR Presi- dent, “I’ve seen how important OUSU is in advocating for students, supporting common rooms, and offering welfare resources.

“Our JCRs and MCRs are there for us on a day-to-day basis — they’re the guardians of our college galaxies, our benevolent bop-bringers, and — most importantly — our first port of call when we need support. We don’t always see the work that OUSU does, so it’s easy to dismiss it. But when we do so, we also dismiss the students OUSU helps, and the vital services it provides.”

Howe explained, “One of my key pledges is about reviewing the student welfare system. One of the most important things a student union can do is find ways to best look after its members. The great differences between welfare structures in colleges mean that it’s often hard to know who to turn to if you need help. We need to make sure that we’re giving students the best support possible, and I want to investigate how to do this.”

Howe also pledged to tackle ‘Lad Culture’ by launching a “series of discussion forums, encouraging teams, societies and campaigns to engage in debate and propose solutions.”

Will Obeney, of Regent’s Park, is running as part of the ‘For Oxford’ slate, and is currently Chair of the Scrutiny Committee. When asked why he was running, he told Cherwell, “A year ago I thought OUSU was ineffective and irrelevant in our common room-dominated university, but having now experienced the organisation as a JCR President, I’ve realised it’s capable of getting big wins for students. The Student Union is getting better, but it needs to meet face-to-face with students, and be more strategic in its lobbying on our university’s most powerful committees.”

Obeney listed one of his main pledges as reducing disparities between colleges in terms of academic provision, accommodation, and funding.

He explained, “Some colleges are really failing their students. I want to investigate the major issues that students face at Oxford, and formulate a Minimum Expectations document that outlines what every student should be entitled to. We can use this as a long-term strategy for negotiations with the university and the colleges, pushing them to adopt our guidelines.”

He was also keen to mention his proposed “Out-of-Hours Pledge”, for which, he explained, “Other OUSU officers and I will be on hand, for two hours after 5pm every week, running an open surgery that any student can come to. I further will ensure an OUSU officer comes to every college every term – making sure OUSU is a representative voice.”

Running independently, Adam Roberts — a PPEist at Wadham — has pledged to hold a vote every year on “what policies students think OUSU should have”, with successful proposals being made into a yearly manifesto. Wadham SU Vice-President last year, he is currently on OUSU’s Complaints Committee and the University’s Rules Committee, while he spent two years as trustee of a national children’s rights charity, CRAE.

He told Cherwell, “I’m running because I think it’s really important we have a conversation about how OUSU can become more engaging and open.”

Commenting on his proposal for a yearly vote on OUSU policies, he explained, “This makes it absolutely clear to the University and others what we as students want. It’s an interesting starting-point, and fingers crossed my candidacy alone will get some debates going.”

His aim, as stated in his manifesto, is for “a student union that was more dynamic and less centralised, and it’d be absolutely clear every year what we wanted as a whole student body.” Roberts insisted, however, that “a change like that one needs to be backed by a powerful mandate for reform from students like you: students who likely feel detached from OUSU, or love the work it does but not the way it’s run, or aren’t sure what it does at all.”

With regard to his campaign, Roberts explained that students probably wouldn’t be seeing him at their nearest hustings. He added, “Hustings are not the place to debate the specifics of policies, and I don’t think it’s good practice in general to make pledges on-the-fly.

“What I will be doing is organising a couple of campaign events where you can meet and talk to me in person: maybe somewhere quiet over a cup of tea, or maybe on another night in a roomy Oxford pub.”

Voting will open at 8am on Tuesday of 6th week, and will close at 5pm on Thursday of 6th week. The central hustings will be taking place on Wednesay of 5th week, at 7:30 PM, after OUSU council.

Oxstew Column: Week 4

Opinion

Anders Bagge

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7th November 2014

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The 2014 Michaelmas elections for the Oxford University Student Union, which several sources described as “the nastiest yet”, have finished after two weeks of poorly-attended hustings, repeated electoral complaints, and only a fraction of Oxford’s students casting their vote.

Despite no lack of controversy, and a certain amount of sceptical attention from student media, the annual process for electing OUSU’s most important representatives went fairly similarly to the last ten years of OUSU elections, and the ten years before that, with only about one in five of those eligible to vote bothering to do so.

The news that Returning Officers had been kept busy dealing with lengthy accusations of electoral malpractice on all sides also elicited little surprise, as did proclamations by newspapers that the elections had been “the nastiest Oxford has ever experienced outside of every single Union election”.

Students have reacted to the news with widespread ambivalence. “The what? Oh. Well, to be honest, I hadn’t even realised the elections had gone by,” Leah Fervingham, of Worcester College, told The Oxstew. “But even if they hadn’t happened and you were just making that up, I’m not sure I would have known any better,” she continued. “I mean, it sounds plausible.”

Though in previous years flamboyant characters such as maverick populist Louis Trup and joke candidate DJ Townsend had injected a dose of excitement into the elections, setting themselves apart from the usual array of sweater-wearing do-gooders and Labour Club candidates through sheer force of personality, the elections have remained steadfastly the nastiest so far, and the voter turnout steadfastly disappointing, every single year.

The winning Presidential candidate is thought to be delighted that, despite a long, hard, and stressful campaign fraught with petty rivalry, the single-figure percentage of total eligible voters responsible for the result had “spoken with one clear voice, and that clear voice was Oxford University’s voice, and that voice demands change for OUSU”.

Next year’s new sabbatical team are thought to have already agreed to prioritise “enhancing member-representative communicative transparency, empowering liberation campaigns to seek the change they need to achieve, and fostering a nurturing and symbiotic Ox-environment”.

Although during the elections rival teams of candidates, or ‘slates’, had described each other variously as “incompetent crooks who wouldn’t know a Student Union if they were destroying it from within”, “leftist nincompoops with only a remote grasp of reality”, “bastards, bloody bastards”, and “insult-throwing ad-hominem-attacking credibility-reducing idiots I would never even consider sharing an office with”, the eventual winners denied that there would be any tension arising from these remarks during the entire year spent together in a claustrophobic office.

Interview: Fran Boait

Opinion

Niamh Mcintyre

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7th November 2014

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How is money created? It’s a question I’d never asked myself before my conversation with Fran Boait, director of Positive Money. This is the organization who’s most fundamental aim is to help people to understand how our monetary system works, and, by doing so, to engage with its failures.

Boait tells me that most people instinctively feel that our current financial system isn’t working, “The sense I get from doing this kind of work is that there is an underlying feeling that the financial sector isn’t serving society. But most people aren’t able to put their finger on the root causes of our broken system. No one asks themselves how money is created.”

So, to return to my initial question, I ask Fran to summarize how money is created. “In our current system, most of our money is created only when banks lend; any money created in our economy is offset by debt. But the financial crisis was caused by an unsustainable accumulation of private debt, so we think that allowing that debt to increase even further could lead us into another financial crisis.”

Boait goes on to tell me that Positive Money has its roots in the 2008 financial crash, and the search for a meaningful response and solutions to the greatest economic crisis in living memory.

“We were founded in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Ben Dyson, our founder, had studied Economics at university, and he wondered why, post-2008, there wasn’t anyone talking about the way money is created. So he wanted to found an organization that was going to start this debate — a debate that no one else was having.”

Boait’s involvement with Positive Money was the result of a very different personal journey: after postgraduate study in carbon capture, her commitment to climate change activism led to “a frustration that a lot of action on climate change was being shelved [as a result of the recession]. And so I began to see that the root cause of this inactivity was our economic system.”

Positive Money propose a system of full reserve banking. This would prevent banks from lending money that they do not physically have backing for (as in our current system of fractional reserve banking).

This takes back the ability to create money from private banks and gives it purely to the state. This would, they say, stabilize a boom-and-bust system, because the banks would no longer be in control of the amount of money in the economy. From 2002 to 2009, banks increased the amount of money in the UK by £1 trillion through lending (with every new loan creating new money). Positive Money also make the case that money created by a central bank would result in much greater government revenue, and therefore greater public spending. Their system was recently adopted as the economic policy of the Green Party, their most high-profile endorsement to date.

The three aims of Positive Money are simply stated. They are: “1) Take the power to create money away from the banks, and return it to a democratic, transparent, and accountable process; 2) Create money free of debt; 3) Put new money into the real economy rather than financial markets and property bubbles.”

Boait summarizes these aims in her own way. “We shouldn’t be increasing the complexity of our debt-based monetary system. We should step back to examine its flaws, and ask ourselves how we can create a new system.”

However, their end goal of creating a new system is clearly only possible if there is sufficient public interest in, and importantly engagement with, this issue. I ask Fran how she combats popular apathy — how she makes abstract economics feel real to those who come across Positive Money’s website or social media output.

“It’s definitely a challenge. The majority of people don’t really care about understanding how the economy works. But they do care about how it relates to them in their everyday lives. We try to quantify, for example, the impact that it has on house prices, on rising levels of personal household debt. We try to demonstrate the root cause of these boom-and-bust cycles and the ways in which they lead to inequality, the way they impact on jobs and businesses. Nobody wakes up and thinks, actually, I should find out how the banking system works, because they just want to get on with their lives, and so a lot of our time is spent finding various ways of making [monetary reform] relevant.”

Reducing the national deficit has arguably been the coalition’s most fundamental policy in government. Fran tells me that Positive Money actually sees reduction of the deficit rendered futile in our current monetary system. Like other economic problems, the deficit, for them, can only be addressed with systemic change.

“What is frustrating for us,” she says, “is that all of the political rhetoric is around the national debt, which is nothing in comparison to, and is partly caused by, private debt. Household debt, business debt, personal debt, are all at a historically high level, and that is the root of a fragile economy. If interest rates rise, people may default on their loans, which could precipitate a run on banks and a national crisis, as we saw in 2008.”

For Positive Money, instead of ever more extreme austerity measures, the deficit might easily be reduced by the revenue generated by state-created money. Because the profits from creating money currently go to the banks instead of to the government, the government has to borrow much larger amounts of money to make up for this lost income. Fran claims, “To focus on the national debt is missing the point, and ignores how the current system causes these financial crises, by accumulating massive amounts of private debt.”

For Positive Money, greater regulation of banks does not offer any meaningful solution. “Regulation ignores the larger issues at play. As we’ve seen in the limited scope of reforms since the crisis, what happens is that you get thousands of pages of complex regulation. But the bank lobby has huge resources, millions of pounds, to spend on lawyers to water down these changes. And there’s nobody fighting that battle on the side of society.”

“If we keep going down the regulation route, change is going to be incredibly slow. If we want to tackle the big issues like climate change, we don’t really have time to go down that road.”

Positive Money is a campaign notably motivated by this urgent need for change, by a desire to challenge unquestioned assumptions about the economy which are reinforced by the status quo. “Most politicians, and most of the general public, generally have faith that economists understand how the system works. And we’re saying, actually, no they don’t.

Debate: Is space exploration a waste of resources?

Opinion

Sian Meaney

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7th November 2014

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Debate: Is space exploration a waste of resources?

YES

Sian Meaney

Like most people, I have a great desire to learn about the wonders of the world in which we live. However, I also have a deep respect for human life and an understanding that ensuring a high quality of life for those around us is far more important than satiating curiosity about any topic, including space. The exploration of space not only exhausts resources that could be better used elsewhere, but also implies that the welfare of those around us is of less importance than exploring the unknown.

This debate is provoked by the recent Virgin Galactic crash, which resulted in the fatality of one pilot and the serious injury of another. Writing about the incident in a blog-post, Richard Branson stated that “every new transportation system has to deal with bad days” and that “space is hard — but worth it”. Is it really “worth it” though? Our hyper-commercialized world is one in which the loss of life and millions of pounds worth of technology is described as a “bad day” rather than a disaster.

However, though this commercial venture displays much that is wrong with our attitude to space exploration, I feel that it is more important to focus on trips funded or subsidised by taxpayers’ money, as these most directly detract from public spending.

Space exploration is a legitimate enterpise — but the needs of humanity should take precedence over its desires. We need to look after our planet and combat the multitude of prob- lems threatening our ecosystem: the disappearance of the rainforest, global warming, and the pollution of the oceans.

Rather than looking to the stars, we ought to look around us and focus on solving problems facing our generation and those to come.

We ought to consider those suffering from starvation before spending millions of pounds on the small chance of learning something new. I realise this is unfeasible — but it does put things in perspective. As President Eisenhower once said, “Every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

I acknowledge that space exploration has led to the creation of beneficial technologies. I’m grateful for Velcro, I really am. However, we could gain more by focusing our energies on creating things that directly benefit us, or directly alleviate urgent problems, at a fraction of the cost.

Moreover, we often lose the money and resources that we send into space: the history of failed missions to Mars dates back 40 years and includes the $165m Mars Polar Lander and the $125m Mars Climate Orbiter.

Space exploration is heralded as a way to gain scientific knowledge. However, the majority of NASA’s spending on research is ground-based. China has made no claims to scientific benefit from manned missions, and neither has Russia in recent years. This provokes the question “Why not focus on unmanned missions instead?”

My answer: because this too is a waste of resources. Areas of our plan- et are still relatively unknown, areas we know contain a wealth of life. Our seabed is relatively unexplored, as is Antarctica.

We also ought to question whether space exploration is really about the accumulation of knowledge. The most articulate opposition to the Apollo missions came from Nobel scientists, who objected to the cutting of their budgets to fund what DeGroot has labelled an “ego trip to the moon”.

China’s manned programme was intended to challenge publicly the US domination of space, while Bush’s pledge to boost spending on NASA and restart the manned mission to Mars (priced at $400 billion) was a political response to this.

Does the loss of human life and the expenditure of billions of dollars on an ego trip constitute a waste of resources? I think so.

NO

Tom Robinson

At the dawn of the space age, people lived in fear as Russia and the USA vied for military and technological dominance. As astronauts sped away from Earth, humanity was reminded of the very real capacity we had to destroy each other. If we could send men to the stars, we could certainly fire nuclear warheads around the globe.

But during this time, we discovered phenomenal things through space exploration. We were reminded of just how boundless human creativity and ingenuity could be.

Just three decades after a war had ended in which planes were built from donated pots and pans, we had landed humans on the moon and brought them back safely. We had done so on the back of human intellect alone, unaided by subsequent scientific developments in the past four decades.

Space exploration is not a waste of resources, if only because it serves to give humanity a vision, to make us take note of just how incredibly far we have come and how far we still have to go.

Of course, people will argue that we have our priorities wrong. Space exploration, one could argue, is a luxury that can ill be afforded when people are suffering unnecessarily from diseases, research into which is under-funded. Wasteful when, as happened last week, scientific equipment and supplies, weighing 5000 pounds in total, were destroyed by a malfunction. Irresponsible when the gasses the rockets emit contribute to global warming.

I recognise and understand the importance of all of these issues, yet I still want space exploration to continue. When children sat and watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out from the lunar module, a generation of scientists was inspired. And when those people went on to create the Curiosity rover, currently roaming on the surface of Mars beaming back the most detailed pictures of the Martian surface we’ve ever seen, another generation was made.

Who knows what they might do? Could they be the scientists to establish colonies on the Moon, the generation to mine vital resources from outer-space?

The Universe is vast and complex, which is why space exploration is such an effective means of inspiring future generations to contribute to human understanding and development.

Whilst it is disappointing when we lose scientific equipment and other resources due to malfunctions, it is also a crucial part of the learning process. We may have failed to send this rocket into space, but we’ll learn from it how to send countless more there successfully.

And it is this challenge, the fact that it is not easy to explore space, which drives us to do exactly that. Humanity has always strived to venture into the unexplored, find new phenomena, new ways of improving our lives.

Space is no different. There are asteroids full of materials that can be mined without polluting the atmosphere and damaging the livelihood of others. And so many technologies, developed initially for space travel, have become central to how we live on Earth: safer, faster aeroplane travel, better housing insulation, fire- resistant materials, artificial limbs, robotics and so on.

If we can explore space, harness what it has to offer, and develop new technologies in the process, then we’ll be contributing rather than wasting resources.

Space exploration cannot be seen as a waste of resources. It is at least a means of testing and refining technology that, in fact, provides the resources we need to improve our lives and those of future generations.

More importantly than this, though, is that space exploration inspires us. As the International Space Station orbits above us, we are reminded that when collectively we act together, there is little we cannot do. That symbolism is priceless.

Butt-plugs aren’t as edgy as they were

Culture

Isaac Goodwin

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6th November 2014

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You’ve almost certainly seen the large green butt-plug resembling installation by Paul McCarthy, put on display in Paris earlier this month. The work, entitled ‘Tree’, was gone within a day; what has been called a conservative backlash of ‘vandalism’ finally caused security services to deflate the ‘abstracted Christmas tree’. McCarthy was actually slapped in the face by a passer by.

Maybe you haven’t, though, seen the artist’s reaction. Did he realise his installation was in bad taste and step back? No. Well, hopefully he realised it was in bad taste, or there really is no hope for humanity, but his response has been aggressive and repulsive, to take ‘revenge’ by upping his game.

Across the river, in the newly renovated Monnaie de Paris, the city’s historic mint, McCarthy’s newest work has been going on for the last week or so. Entitled ‘Chocolate Factory’, the artwork consists of a working factory, producing chocolate santas and butt plugs, to be sold outside for the bizarrely high price of €50 each. What?

It’s almost a hundred years since Duchamp displayed his work entitled ‘Fontain’; literally, just a signed urinal. That had a point in a stuffy art-world. And maybe it was actually shocking that someone would do that.

But McCarthy? His work is the ultimate in tiresome, posturing attention seeking. You can almost see the thought process. ‘What will shock everyone?’ Still, in an age where, to be honest, the urinal doesn’t cut the mustard. I know…a giant green
butt plug will ensure that every press outlet, right down to the last student-run papers, will run a piece on me.

I do feel a little ashamed at pandering to that sort of blatant, lewd attention seeking. But the thing is, it’s really not that shocking. In fact, the green butt plug that caused so much controversy isn’t a new idea of the artist’s. He’s been doing it for the last few decades.

In 2001, McCarthy installed his work ‘Santa Claus’ in Rotterdam, a giant, rather hideous, statue holding an object which bears, again, strong resemblance to a butt-plug. The work became known as the ‘butt plug gnome’. This isn’t the only one – several other inflatable lewd santas have been erected in various places.

In fact, the ‘chocolate factory’ isn’t even new either. In 2007, the artist released a series of chocolate santas with butt-plugs. If they weren’t sold out you’d be able to pick up one of these horrors for the generous price of £371 on Artspace. Here’s the blurb: “This work demonstrates the artist’s proclivity towards messy, edible materials that viscerally conjure bodily processes and fluids. Santa Claus is also a recurring motif in McCarthy’s body of work.” Let’s interpret that art-speak; chocolate looks like shit, and McCarthy can’t think of anything else to produce.

People sometimes, unfairly, criticize modern art for simply being an idea, given to a workshop to produce. But here is something worth criticizing, something where the idea is so unbelievably awful, so mind numbingly tiresome and passe.

Review: Freud’s Auerbach Collection at the Tate

Culture

Sabhbh Curran

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6th November 2014

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Review: Freud’s Auerbach Collection at the Tate

This little exhibition at the Tate Britain gives a strange insight into the personal relationship between two of the recent greats of the British art scene. Lucien Freud’s private collection of Auerbach’s work hung in his London home until his death three years ago and now (to avoid inheritance tax) the works are being displayed together for the last time before being distributed across UK galleries.

Even superficially, the two artists have a lot in common. Both were born to Jewish families in Berlin, only escaping the rise of Nazism by moving to Britain. Auerbach was sent to England by his parents in 1939 under the Kindertransport scheme. They were unable to follow, and died a few years later in concentration camps. As with so many other Jewish artists, such as Mark Rothko, the experience of the Holocaust left a lasting impression and a lingering influence upon his art.

From 1948, Auerbach’s interest in art became obsessive as he studied at St. Martin’s and the Royal College of Art. Less prestigious, but undoubtedly more formative, were the additional classes he took at the Borough Polytechnic where he was taught by David Bomberg, a cult figure, despite his inability to get a job at one of the larger London art schools after the Second World War. It was around this time that Auerbach became close to Freud, as both began to work under the rough guise of the subsequently named ‘School of London’ group — a collection of figurative artists including the likes of Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff. Up until his death a few years ago, Freud was hailed as the greatest living British artist, the last bohemian, the creator of such fantastic art that his appalling treatment of women was kept in the background.

Auerbach’s connection to London spanned his whole life and, unsurprisingly, it is his local neighbourhood of Camden that recurs the most in his work. In the Tate exhibition, the London canvases fill the room — far larger and brighter than any of the portraits displayed. Indeed, this quality has not escaped the notice of the Tate Britain curator Elena Crippa who has highlighted the extent to which “his work does not reproduce — there is something so wonderfully tactile and you truly need to experience it”. Auerbach’s work is similarly defined by its unique focus upon texture, a component of the work that assumes almost equal importance to the subjects he painted. ‘Mornington Crescent’ in particular stands out. Auerbach’s thick paint and roughly hewn lines avoid total abstraction and show the early morning confusion of a city waking up. The sultry colours are more effective than the mid-day, mid-commute luridness of some of his other London scenes.

I personally found the best (and most moving) part of the exhibition to be the series of hand drawn postcards and birthday cards sent from Auerbach over many years — all of which Freud had framed in testament to the strength of their friendship. They have little messages and portraits, penned in Auerbach’s rough style, and give a clear insight into the affection that the two felt for each other. One card even depicts the famous photograph of the two having breakfast in Smithfield, sitting jovially side by side.

But the cards also show an amusing, and endearing, amount of disorganisation on Auerbach’s part. One reads; “Dear Lucian, This very ill-timed Birthday present. I have just been in to Paxton & W [Whitfield] and wanted to get a ham before they SOLD OUT. Love Frank. PS Many Happy Returns of the 8th.” This is certainly not the aloof image of the artist that we are used to seeing.

Crippa argues, “There is so much affection in them and they give the lie to the common portrayal of Auerbach and Freud as rather austere artists.” It is certainly true that we rarely get such a personal insight into the interactions of our most famous artists, and this is the real strength of the exhibition. It humanises both Auerbach and Freud and, through their interactions, one learns a great deal about them as individuals and the undoubted impact and influence each exerted upon the other.

The Tate is using this exhibition as a taster for their major retrospective of Auerbach’s work in 2015, but in many ways this single room of his works is definitive. It seems pretty sad that art galleries all over the UK are currently bidding and vying for one work or another from this 40-work strong collection. Of course, it would be impractical to keep all of the paintings and cards together — after all which gallery would get custody over such an important bequest? But splitting up Freud’s collection — each component part going to the highest bidder — seems a shame. It is fairly unlikely that it will ever be seen in this complete unity again, adding a touch of pathos to the exhibition.