tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31472963947563245392024-02-20T08:14:22.089-08:00James HillMember of Black Dogs. Organiser of Light Night Leeds. Senior Arts & Regeneration Officer.James Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00664645333004643223noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3147296394756324539.post-60670063505249368022010-10-13T07:33:00.000-07:002010-10-13T07:42:15.708-07:00'Seen From A Window'From the Light Night brochure;<br />40 / Seen from the Window: Henri Lefebvre and the 712th Human Performance Wing<br />Meet at the Town Hall Steps, LS1 3AD<br />1-1.30am<br />End your (Light) night with a rehearsed reading, with music, of a chapter of Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis. 'Other times, there is no-one at the lights, with their alternating flashes (red, amber, green) and the signal continues to function in the void, a despairing social mechanism marching inexorably through the desert'.<br /><br />Richard & I read, sang, played the following at the end of a very long day / night of fun & work. Many thanks to those of you who were there to listen along.<br /><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Seen From A Window, by Henri Lefebvre, Italo Calvino and the 712<sup>th</sup> Human Performance Wing.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Hello everyone, & thank you for coming.<span style=""> </span>It has become a bit of a Light Night tradition in the last few years for those of us who have been working or enjoying the event to gather here on the Town Hall steps, at which point I usually give a bit of a speech.<span style=""> </span>In fact, the second speech of the night since I will have already done one at the Civic Reception at the College of Art… six hours ago.<span style=""> </span>Obviously you are largely a different bunch of people, here for different reason, & I can say different things to you.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> So… this year, I wanted to put a bit more thought into it came round to the idea that I should really put Light Night to the test by putting myself to the test.<span style=""> </span>If, on Light Night, <i style="">anyone </i>can be an artist, then I should force myself to do a bit of the same, to not wholly hide behind other people’s talent and events, to put myself forward.<span style=""> </span>So, I wanted to read out loud to you, something that I have done before, & then, with Richard’s help, to do <i style="">something </i>that I would never even have thought to have had the courage to do in public, which is to sing.<span style=""> </span>But don’t worry.<span style=""> </span>If you feel like running and hiding then I can ensure that I will only be singing for less than one minute & reading for less than 10.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> There are two books that I really feel are the secret bibles, instruction manuals, the <i style="">real </i>event manuals for Light Night, & which I actually carry around in my rucksack every year for strength and inspiration.<span style=""> </span>They are<span style=""> </span><i style="">Invisible Cities</i> by Italo Calvino & <i style="">The Production of Space</i> by Henri Lefebvre.<span style=""> </span>Also it seems that every year there is a soundtrack to the planning of Light Night – one album that I get particularly into for the final month and never stop listening to.<span style=""> </span>Usually it’s some kind of relatively recent album by a band from, or connected to, Leeds.<span style=""> </span>This year for some reason it has been a very London album which is thirty – one years old – <i style="">London Calling </i>by The Clash and in particular one track which I think might just be the most insanely catchy song about social justice I have ever heard!<span style=""> </span>What we will be performing is a mash-up, not necessarily directly lifted from those books but in every case speaking in the voices of Henri Lefebvre, Italo Calvino, Billy Boy & Stagger Lee about Paris, Venice, Beijing, Perinthia all as simulacra of the one city, Leeds at night.<span style=""> </span>& as ways of thinking about<span style=""> </span><i style="">why</i> do Light Night, <i style="">what Light Night is supposed to do</i>, & more as the years go by, <i style="">is it worth it?</i><span style=""> </span>Is it worth the £25,000 of taxpayers’ money that goes into it?<span style=""> </span>Is it worth all the unpaid time that artists and volunteers and venues put into it?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Now unfortunately I have become a victim of my own event management & because what was an informal tradition is now a listed event, a listed <i style="">council </i>event, I was told that I wouldn’t be able to perform on the steps of my beloved Town Hall, without keeping the building open for first aiders, & having security guards here, in case you people hurt yourselves.<span style=""> </span>So, you need to follow me down off the steps, <i style="">carefully</i>, and come with me to the traffic lights, where we can get the right view, of the scene of Paris from the 94-year old Henri Lefebvre’s window.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> [Walk to convenient site].</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> From the window opening on to Rue R... or the Headrow, facing the famous Pompidou Centre, there is no need to lean much to see into the distance.<span style=""> </span>To the right, the palace-centre P., the Forum, up as far as the (central) Bank of France.<span style=""> </span>To the left up as far as the Archives.<span style=""> </span>Perpendicular to this direction, the <i style="">Hotel de Ville</i> and, on the other side, the <i style="">Arts et Metiers</i>.<span style=""> </span>The whole of Paris, ancient and modern, traditional and creative, active and lazy.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> He who walks down the street, over there, is immersed in the multiplicity of noises, murmurs, rhythms (including those of the body, but does he pay attention, except at the moment of crossing the street, when he has to calculate roughly the number of his steps?).<span style=""> </span>By contrast, from the window, the noises distinguish themselves, the flows separate out, rhythms respond to one another.<span style=""> </span>Towards the right, below, a traffic light.<span style=""> </span>On red, cars at a standstill, the pedestrians cross, feeble murmurings, footsteps, confused voices.<span style=""> </span>One does not chatter while crossing a dangerous junction under the threat of wild cats and elephants ready to charge forward, taxis, buses, lorries, various cars.<span style=""> </span>Hence the relative silence in this crowd.<span style=""> </span>A kind of soft murmuring, sometime a cry, sometimes a call.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Disparate crowds, yes, tourists from far away countries, Finland, Sweden, Portugal, whose cars but with difficulty find places to park, shoppers come from afar, wholesalers, lovers of art or novelties, people from the outskirts who stream in between the so-called peak hours, in such a way that <i style="">everybody</i>, the <i style="">world</i> is always there around these shopping centres and new developments, these huge metallic trinkets; boys and girls often go forth hand in hand, as if to support each other in this test of modernity, in the exploration of these meteorites fallen on old Paris, come from a planet several centuries ahead of our own, and on top of that a complete failure on the market!...<span style=""> </span>Many among these young people walk, walk, without a break, do the tour of the sights, of Beaubourg, of the Forum: one sees them again and again, grouped or solitary; they walk indefatigably, chewing on gum or a sandwich.<span style=""> </span>They only stop to stretch themselves out, no doubt exhausted, on the square itself, in the arcades of the Chiraquian Forum, or on the steps of the Fountain of the Innocent, which now serves only this purpose.<span style=""> </span>The noise that pierces the ear comes, not from passers-by, but from the engines pushed to the limit when starting up.<span style=""> </span>No ear, no piece of apparatus could grasp this whole, this flux of metallic and carnal bodies.<span style=""> </span>In order to grasp the rhythms, a bit of time, a sort of meditation on time, the city, people, is required.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Other, less lively, slower rhythms superimpose themselves on this inexorable rhythm, which hardly dies down at night: children leaving for school, some very noisy, even piercing screams of morning recognition.<span style=""> </span>Then towards half past nine it’s the arrival of the shoppers, followed shortly by the tourists, in accordance with exceptions (storms or advertising promotions), with a timetable that is almost always the same; the flows and conglomerations succeed one another: they get fatter or thinner but always agglomerate at the corners in order subsequently to clear a path, tangle and disentangle themselves amongst the cars.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> These last rhythms (schoolchildren, shoppers, tourists) would be more <b style="">cyclical</b>, of large and simple intervals, at the heart of livelier, <b style="">alternating</b> rhythms, at brief intervals, cars, regulars, employees, bistro clients.<span style=""> </span>The interaction of diverse, repetitive and different rhythms animates, as one says, the street and the neighbourhood.<span style=""> </span>The linear, which is to say, in short, succession, consists of journeys to and fro: it combines with the cyclical, the movements of long intervals.<span style=""> </span>The cyclical is social organisation manifesting itself.<span style=""> </span>The linear is the daily grind, the routine, therefore the perpetual, made up of chance and encounters.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> The night does not interrupt the diurnal rhythms but modifies them, and above all slows them down.<span style=""> </span>However, even at three or four o’clock in the morning, there are always a few cars at the red light.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes one of them, whose driver is coming back from a late night, goes straight through it.<span style=""> </span>Other times, there is no-one at the lights, with their alternating flashes (red, amber, green), and the signal continues to function in this void, a despairing social mechanism marching inexorably through the desert, before the facades that dramatically proclaim their vocation as ruins.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Summoned to lay down the rules for the map of Leeds, the City Architects, Aldermen, Councillors & Landlords established its two crossed streets aligned with Spirit & with Trade, the East/West Road to the Church for Spirit, & the North/South Road to the Bridge for Trade.<span style=""> </span>They built their factories in the image of temples & their extractor flues in the image of bell towers.<span style=""> </span>They laid three gold sovereigns beneath the foundation stone of a new church & named it Holy Trinity, after the coins, so that the house of the Spirit would be held strong, on its foundation of trade.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> The City Architects & Cartographers high up in the Leonardo Building designed their map of the city by means of crosses, flowers & gold, & at its centre they attempted to set a social norm (dictated, & corrupted by conflicting influences of spirit & trade, petals of deprivation & rooms of gold…), missing the point, that their map of the city could never become the city. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Leeds, they thought, could reflect a harmony of spirit & trade.<span style=""> </span>The benevolence of Spirit (entering the city by the road to the church) & the logic of globally mobile capital (entering the city by the road to the bridge) would shape the inhabitants’ destinies.<span style=""> </span>True, that, but not in the way that they foresaw. Enforcing a social norm, producing space through the conflicting interests of spirit & trade is just as dangerous a control situation as is the ‘cure for difference’ implied in mental health treatment, eugenics, or genocide.<span style=""> </span>Following their calculations precisely, Leeds was constructed.<span style=""> </span>Various peoples came to populate it. The first generation born as free-tradesmen, burgage men, began to grow along its fields & rivers & streets & these free citizens reached the age to marry, & to have children, & to buy clothes for their children.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Outside the Town Hall, at the cross-roads between the Headrow and Calverley Streeet, on Leeds’ pedestrianised streets & in its galleries and shopping arcades this autumn night 803 years later I walk amongst fellow cripples, Jews, dwarves, chavs, hunchbacks, Bangladeshis, holocaust survivors, obese men, racist councillors, bearded women – but the worst cannot be seen!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Those families whose off-spring’s flowering deformities explicate the conflict between spirit & trade, or whose off-spring attempt to escape the control situation, are unable to give them space, or allow them to grow. I heard guttural howls from the rivers buried below the pavements & the domed rooms over the Markets, temples & campaniles, where families hide children with three heads or with six legs.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> And… & the City Architects are faced with a difficult choice.<span style=""> </span>Either they must admit that all their planning was wrong & their map of the city is unable to describe the city, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.<span style=""> </span>Ignore the map, & all that is solid will melt into air.<span style=""> </span>Start again.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> So, Billy Boy has been shot</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">& Stagger Lee’s come out on top?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">(Don’t you know it is wrong)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">To cheat a crying man?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">(Don’t you know it is wrong)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">To cheat a trying man?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">You’d better stop!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It is the wrong ‘em boyo.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Well if you must start over again</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Start all over again</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">(Don’t you know it is wrong?)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Play it Billy play</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">(Don’t you know it is wrong?)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Play it Billy play</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">And you will find</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It is the right ‘em boyo.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">But if you must lie and deceit</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">And trample people under your feet</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">(Don’t you know it is wrong)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">To cheat a trying man?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">(Don’t you know it is wrong)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">To cheat a crying man?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">You’d better stop!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It is the wrong ‘em boyo!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> [The Internationale]…</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> And Marco Polo says, looking over a city which is not his city, from Henri Lefebvre’s window, remembering his home: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together.<span style=""> </span>There are two ways to escape suffering it.<span style=""> </span>The first is easy for many: to lie and deceit and trample people under your feet; to accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it.<span style=""> </span>The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: to start all over again, to play it, Billy, play, to seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: to seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Thank you.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>James Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00664645333004643223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3147296394756324539.post-238529272258157652010-04-29T04:51:00.000-07:002010-04-29T04:52:35.286-07:00Just another Thursday.Going to City Inn in Leeds tonight for the private view of an exhibition by Guiseppe Lambertini (sp?) which I am excited about seeing.James Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00664645333004643223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3147296394756324539.post-16699289932312674792009-03-10T18:08:00.000-07:002009-03-10T18:15:40.825-07:00Light Night First Planning MeetingIt's five months to the day since Light Night 2008 & one day short of seven months until LN09. Today we started the ball rolling on the next event with our initial planning meeting for the year, this time in the main auditorium of the Carriageworks. It was a funny day, of really mixed feelings. I hate standing in front of people & doing presentations, but at the same time it was really exciting to think that it is all starting again. On the way into work I got stopped by, or stopped, three people who hadn't RSVPed to the event & chatted to them about it, & that is part of what working on Light Night is about... you are just talking to so many people all the time that you can't get from one end of a street to another without bumping into one or two of them.<br /><br />The presentation seemed to go really well. It felt good having Andrew & Helen there supporting, & particularly Jennyanne. Whenever she is about, she just has a totally no - nonsense approach to any problem, big or small, which I don't have... but when she is about it transfers to me & I always feel a lot calmer about things, like nothing is REALLY a problem.<br /><br />Still, lots of adrenalin, & adrenalin messes you up! Didn't want to go back to the office so went to the Vic for 'meeting' with JAS, Helen & Gavin from the Met, then off to Black Dogs at five, then to the Fenton. I had something to eat & was suddenly so tired that I was almost slurring my words. Came home, fell asleep at nine & now am awake at 1.15 feeling totally wired, hungry but can't be bothered to cook. So, this too, reminds me of some of the hard times & the worst times of working on Light Night - the misdirected energy, so much will to concentrate that your brain can't find anything to concentrate on...James Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00664645333004643223noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3147296394756324539.post-43146744718652826442008-12-18T10:25:00.001-08:002008-12-18T10:29:28.503-08:00I am the Senior Arts & Regeneration Officer for Leeds City Council. As part of this job, I organise <a href="http://www.lightnightleeds.co.uk">Light Night</a> in Leeds.<br /><a href="http://www.lightnightleeds.co.uk">www.lightnightleeds.co.uk</a><br /><br />I am also a member of <a href="http://www.black-dogs.org">Black Dogs</a> have been involved in one way or another with all of their projects since the Eggs Flour Milk Cheese exhibition in June 2008.<br /><a href="http://www.black-dogs.org">www.black-dogs.org</a><br /><br />I am fascinated with the Victorian history of Leeds & the way that it has progressed from the crucible of the industrial revolution it once was to the... thing that it now is, & what future potential for this progression might mean for the people of the city.<br />This is one of my other websites - <a href="http://www.secretleeds.com">www.secretleeds.com</a>James Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00664645333004643223noreply@blogger.com1