January 2008 Archives
Peer pressure, frequently the scapegoat of the teen smoker. Unfortunately I'm not a teenager anymore but I had subconsciously hatched a plan whereby 'peer pressure' would be my go-to-guy once again. Except I wasn't sneaking for a crafty B&H behind the Design block, I was in the middle of the foreboding downtime between signing up for Tough Guy 2008 and actually going to Staffordshire and confirming that a) I am tough or b) As I feared, I am in fact quite weak. Should I fail, I would say "pah, never wanted to do it anyway."
You may have caught wind of the madness in the national press, or maybe I was just particularly sensitive to it in the vain hope that a hero-shot would propel me to Redgrave-esque infamy. That didn't materialise. But I feel that the determination of the 5380 competitors and the creativity of the course designers warrants a mention. Imagine if the assault course from the Krypton Factor was hi-jacked by Beelzebub himself and you would be coming close. We tackled burning bales, dead-end tunnels, sky-wires, underwater caverns and miles of tough terrain.
I hear 3000 completed the course, the rest succumbing to hypothermia, exhuastion, injury or weak will. Organiser Billy Wilson, an ex-Grenadier Guard now in his 70's, explains it all:
"I say look boys, here's your chance to be taken to the absolute limits of your endurance. I push them to near death: you step over on to the other side. You go into a state of near hypothermia, and you open your mind to new revelations, like an artist's vision, you open up the doors in your mind. You see a better world, away from the materialism that's gnawing away at us all. You think of guys who fought in the war, and now in Afghanistan. You have to give kids today a sense of that. This is my way of thinking."
I'd like to thank Billy for creating Tough Guy. It was an extremely demanding, unbearably cold, uniquely painful, superbly rewarding way of spending a day. Thankfully my friends and I completed it. We won't be going back.
Then I took a closer look at the label. The company is 'Trekking Mahlzeiten'. Trekking you say. That puts a different spin on things. My wilderness experience stretches to a few walking expeditions in Scotland and the Lake District. So I'm no Sir Edmund Hillary but I feel qualified enough to comment. And let me tell you, If I was stocking up for an expedition and had the option of a tinned cheeseburger that I just throw into boiling water for a couple of minutes, then I'm not embarrased to say I'd take it, at least to try the thing out.
It ticks that intangible box associated with excursions into the wild - morale. Ray Mears would rather I made some pine neddle tea, I'm sure, but I think the trepidation as I open the tin to reveal steamed squidge would be a morale booster itself. Plus if it somehow manages to quell my hunger while tasting ok, then job done.
So I say well done to the Trekking Mahlzeiten crew. They dared to imagine that a cheeseburger could go in a tin, and they made it so.
PS - If it looks like that when it comes out the tin then my name's Ronald Macdonald.
Perhaps some see it as unusual to have a love of animals while simultaneously harvesting them after death to use in an extraordinary genre of art. To call it the taxidermy renaissance would be tempting, but for Battersea based artist Tom Van Herrewege it isn’t about recreating a trend from the past, it is an intensely personal study into animals - what they mean, how they appear, how they are exhibited and whether death is necessarily their final chapter.
Tom has always been fascinated with animals, proudly nurturing exotic spiders, lizards, praying mantids, snakes and the relatively humble ferret from a young age. Now he intertwines a range of techniques to capture extraordinary concepts, the kind that make you wonder ‘What kind of a person thinks this way, and how did they arrive at this point?’
Tom explains: “I am interested in recontextualising the specimens, totally reconstructing the way we would perceive them in their natural environment, for me they are a base material like any other, from there I try to make a piece of art. The aim of my work is to create all new associations and dialogues. I conceive of a new beast from a piece of nature that in turn is effectively alien to itself when it becomes a piece of art”
Tom’s journey has been a juggling act on a number of fronts, his art being played off constantly against an empty wallet and the constraints of academic structure. Since finishing his art education though he has had a chance to pursue that which compels him most.
He showed me some of his work, and I was taken in by the story of his experiments with Jenny Hanivers, an ancient example of botched taxidermy revived by Tom whereby skate or stingray are dried in the sun and become devilish fiends. The process for creating ‘Jeune de Antwerp’ (later ‘cockneyed’ by British sailors to Jenny Hanivers) was started by the sailors sitting on the docks in Antwerp 400 years ago and carving these ‘mermaids’ out of dried cuttlefish, then preserving them with varnish and selling them on to tourists.
Part of Tom’s fascination is with the cultural associations that have developed over the history of the practice. Since the middle of the 16th century Jenny Hanivers have been responsible for tales of devils, dragons and monsters and this mythical aspect is a great driver enabling the creator to basically play god. To create animals that are almost believable in their new guise is a way for Tom to unite his love of nature and art in “a few simple and quite ugly steps”.
I asked Tom where his thought process was leading him next: “I have been stretching rubber casts of stingray over small diamond shaped canvas's and painting on imagery of Aldrovandi (a 16th century imaginative naturalist) drawings of Jenny Hanivers. This departure is effectively a chronology of Jenny Hanivers - from the original stingray, to the sun-dried ‘devils’, to the early depictions of them as exagerated and grotesque and now off on my own contemporary tangent.”
The technique of stretching the casts over canvas is another stark image that highlights the brutal simplicity and uncomfortable nature of creating art from nature. Tom also asked me to consider some compelling questions about the way in which we exhibit in, for example, museums - art or nature? - a subject Tom has written about extensively, and perhaps one for another day. In the meantime, I’m going to ponder the monstrosity I could create if I sun-dried my neighbour’s yapping chihuahua.
www.tomvanherrewege.com
It's been said that Motocross is to MotoGP what Go Karting is to Formula One - a breeding ground for the next generation of motorsport talent. Just as Lewis Hamilton, David Coulthard and certain others have honed their driving skills on the kart circuit from the moment they could climb behind the wheel 
you need look no further than the young Irish bike riding sensation Jonny Rea, to see how motocross can shape the skills of the world class Supersport rider. Shape and add an extra dimension I would say, if you've ever seen the way Jonny rides Cadwell Park and lifts the racebike clear at the classic photo opportunity ... not exactly what the 50 thousand pound corner hugging superbike was made for but something truly spectacular to witness for the viewing public.
Anyone that made it to the Echo Arena in Liverpool on Friday night for the first Supercross event of 2008 might have been left thinking "which one here is the next Jonny?" Indeed while SUSO MVR-D Suzuki's own Carl Nunn battled it out against the best Americans in the 250 and 450 classes the race of the night was definitely in the junior class (riders from as young as 5 to 10 if I remember correctly) where for just under 2 laps it was nip and tuck at the front. Then with just over 1 lap remaining all of the leading 3 collided in a heap! The young snapper in fourth, all 8 years old of him, came piling through to take the honours. Incredible stuff! In the crowd we were all on our feet throughout the race displaying a full range of emotions from excitement for the competition, to concern for the youngsters' safety to, in my case, outright jealousy that I never got into the sport at their age. What a way to learn, what an experience for the young men and what a training ground to find the next Valentino Rossi! That is if these boys do indeed ever feel inclined to give up the dirt for the tarmac. And these days there is infact a third avenue of opportunity on offer to the talented motocross rider, and as the clip below shows, for these creative, determined (kinda crazy) individuals, the sky really is the limit...
But we still associate the technology with the spaces of travel. That’s why Troika, the Russian art collective with studios in London, chose to use it for the new installation in the atrium hall at Terminal 5, Heathrow, entitled Cloud. Prepare to be mesmerised:
It was no statue, no monument, no model. It was flesh and bone: 18 hands of taut muscle and sculpted flanks, such was the way this horse moved. Yet, flicking his tail and twitching his ears as if troubled by flies, this was a horse made of wood, a fragile and skeletal cane frame, bent round plywood and bound by twine. It could trot and gallop, bolt and rear, and, with aluminium spinal structures, it could comfortably carry a man as well. But it wasn’t just that he (a stallion named Joey) could do all these things which enthralled; it was how he did them, how he breathed, how he shivered with fear, bent down to feed, and kicked against the stable with his hind legs when cornered by men he did not trust. Operated by three puppeteers, two inside moving the main body and legs with another outside overseeing the head and neck, the audience was invited to fill in the gaps, to forget the wood, and instead fall heart first into a story of a young boy separated from his horse by The War. That’s the thing with puppets. In communicating ideas and stories that real people and animals can’t touch, those watching are forced to turn to their own imaginations to complete what they see. And in the imagination, what we see and feel can be so much more moving than any black and white tale that allows for no interpretation whatsoever. You feel involved, a part of the action.
To even imagine, in the first place, bringing Michel Morpurgo’s classic children’s tale, War Horse, to the stage would be one thing; going ahead with it and pulling it off as the Handspring Puppet Company have done with the National Theatre is quite another.
If you can find tickets, go. If not, try again.
And while on the subject of puppets, perhaps some of you missed this extraordinary piece of puppetry from the Royal de Luxe theatre company last year:
No, not a Facebook wall, but this year’s Diesel Wall. The popular art competition is set to launch again for 2008 with Diesel already laying down the gauntlet on their wall website. And this year there will be a UK wall - in Manchester - so all you budding British artists need to get your thinking caps on with a view to submitting your entries. There’s no entry form just yet but keep your eyes peeled. It’s a unique opportunity to get your work seen on a massive scale. And besides the wall in Manchester, there will be spaces in Barcelona, New York and Zurich, too.
Diggy. Strange name that, but a cool one nonetheless. Diggy Smerdon’s dad certainly thought so. So sure was he that his daughter would grow up to be a blues singer called ‘Diggy Malone’ that he coined it just for her. And it stuck. Or at least the Diggy part did.
But Diggy Smerdon isn’t a blues singer. So who the hell is she? Well, Diggy is a 21 year-old artist and illustrator living in Falmouth, Cornwall, and what’s more, she lives above a Cornish pasty shop. Does it get any better than that, drawing, painting and eating pasties? I can’t imagine it does, but then, as a self-confessed lover of pasties, I’m slightly biased. When I asked Diggy what it’s like to be so fortunate, I sense the pasty thing might not matter to her quite as much as it would to me; too much of a good thing and all that: “There’s no better alarm clock than the wafting aroma of a Cornish pasty drifting through one’s window each morning. Sadly, yes, this is what gets me up, but I guess it beats the buzz of a wretched alarm clock.” Damn right it does.
The fact is, though, even if you do live above a pasty shop, the life of an artist is rarely easy. Through the years, the image has something of a cliche bordering on myth: no money, overcoats wrapped tight to keep out the cold, nowhere to sleep, forever having to swim against more powerful forces. Often you have to cut off an ear just to call yourself an artist. Of course, more often than not there’s an element of truth in such myths, and that’s certainly the case here: it can be tough working as an artist, particularly when you are just starting out, as Smerdon is now.
“The plan was to become a graphic designer. I left school to get a graphic design diploma and then made it to the University College Falmouth down by the sea. But while my fellow designers played in grids, I found myself doodling in lectures. Eventually it became a problem for me and I had to take a break. So here I am now - no grids, no branding, just pen on paper every day, all day. I’ve never been happier.”
I wonder if, because of the inherent difficulties in being a young artist, she ever questions her decision to pursue her art full time without the securities that a steady income can provide. Her answer is inevitable and, I think, symptomatic of anyone pursuing a creative occupation. Yes, there will times when you think you are shit, but then “obsession isn’t something you can just stop and switch off. So I pick up my pen and carry on again.” Determination, it seems, plays a key role in any artistic success.
Each of her works is characterised most obviously by her use of line, born of a continued allegiance to a trusty black pen. This is what struck me first and prompted me to make contact with Diggy. I found all her pictures striking, beautifully conceived and, above all, honest. You might put her in the school of Andre Masson, whose automated drawings of the 1920s were intended to represent the true workings of the subconscious - perhaps the highest form of honesty. Smerdon is pursuing something similar in her works: “Certainly the process is being free and letting my subconscious form something visual. What I draw is beyond my mind and thoughts. I do get a little surprised by what I draw sometimes, but that’s half the reason I can’t stop because I never know what I’ll see on the paper next.”
You can find out for yourself at her next show in Falmouth - details to follow. In in the meantime, check her website for more images and additional information on a young artist with, we think, a big future ahead of her.
The Andy Warhol Foundation say they were delighted to work with a brand like Burton which, in their words, “values and embraces Andy’s creative spirit”. Burton just always seem to get it right. They’re constantly coming up with imaginative little ideas to keep giving something back to the snowboard community. And now they’re encouraging people to break the law with their Sabotage Stupidity campaign against the four remaining US resorts where snowboarding is prohibited. They want riders to sneak in, ‘Poach’ and film the whole thing with a view to posting it on the Burton site. Where most brands worry endlessly about treading on people’s toes and sticking to the middle of the road, Burton has never been averse to sticking its neck out a bit and taking a risk or two. ‘If you stay in the middle of the road then you’re gonna get run over’ seems to be their mode of thinking. And we like it.
I came across a simple yet imaginative little widget for iTunes today, Moody, that lets you add tags to your songs according to their mood. It’s based on a grid of colour squares ranging from calm to intense and sad to happy on the two axis. When a song is playing in iTunes you just click on the square that best represents that song’s mood. Once you’ve done this with enough songs you’re all set...
So, next time you’ve got someone special at home, you’ve whipped out the wine and things are getting just a little bit steamny, you don’t need to go fumbling around making a new playlist to ensure the moment isn’t lost. You just create a shuffle according to which colour square best represents the kind of mood you’re aiming for. The red square top left, for instance: intense and sad. Good luck with that.
Anyway, it’s a cool idea so check out the Moody site and download the application for free. And if you don't quite understand, there’s a short movie tutorial here.
Anyway, here’s to adidas reminding us all what it really means to play, to be in a team, to work together for something on and off the court, pitch or wherever it is you choose to do your thing.
It’s a dilemma that Sam Killcoyne, still only 15, knows well. Or rather, knew well. Aged 14, he did everything he could to get into a Buzzcocks gig but to no avail. The bouncers didn’t budge and he was turned away, sad and dejected. It was a similar situation whenever he and his friends wanted to see The Horrors, a “wild, intense and psychotic” (their own words) punk band from London: "I tried to see them seven or eight times — once in a strip club in Soho,” Sam says, “and I couldn't get in. Because they sell alcohol, you have to be 18, and I look really young." He didn’t want to go to some seedy teenage night where forty year old promoters throw together a Spice Girls look-a-like act and a few thousand hormonal thirteen year olds hellbent on sharing saliva with as many people as possible. He wanted a place where he could enjoy the music he loved. So he did something about it.
The Underage Club was born. Its premise was, and still is, simple: real music for real music fans under the age of 18. It used to run on a monthly basis at The Coronet, Elephant and Castle (check out the video below of The Horrors performing there in 2006), but now it seems future locations are more closely guarded. If you can’t be bothered to find out where and when it’s happening then you’re probably not the right type. They have a myspace page (check it out here), but even that doesn’t give much away. As far as they’re concerned, the music can do the talking.
August 2007 witnessed the biggest Underage Event yet, a festival in Victoria Park, London (see below), featuring the likes of Patrick Wolf, Mystery Jets, I Was A Club Scout and Pull Tiger Tail. It was a huge success, but then it was only ever going to be. With so many disgruntled teenagers around the country it was only a matter of time before someone got on and did something about it. It works so well because it’s run by the kind of people the events are actually aimed at. For this reason, and despite corporate sponsorship from the likes of Converse - which has helped enormously with things like staging and logistics - Underage Club events are authentic and honest. That’s exactly why Sam wants to hand over his baby to someone else when he feels the time is right. He believes that when he’s no longer under 18 he won’t be well placed to lead things forward. It’ll just bee “too weird”. And besides, being so involved with something like that can take its toll: “What you don't realize when you organise these things is that it can suck all the fun out of it. I'd rather be a punter. I'd like to take Underage as far as it can go and then give it to someone who really appreciates it. Someone who's 13 or 14 and can take it to a different place.” Again, the love of the music and the quality of the offering comes first. Nothing else matters.
Beyond London, similar events are popping up. There’s Teen Culture in Birmingham and Generation in Wolverhampton. And where the Underage Club caters for a more punk-oriented audience in London, along with the currently booming All Age Concerts (myspace), Subverse at Underworld is aimed at young rockers. It was started by Julie Weir, founder of the Visible Noise label, for the same kind of reasons: "It seemed ridiculous that venue restrictions should stop a huge number of the band's supporters from seeing them. Not all kids want to go to a Steps concert at Wembley Arena with their mum." We couldn’t agree more.
So, if like Sam Killcoyne you’re a young music lover who’s tried everything from flirting with bouncers to hiding in the overcoats of bigger brothers to get into clubs, then perhaps you should check out one of these events instead. And, if you do, then let me know what it’s like - ‘cos I can’t get in.
Dean Karnazes is a myth. Or at least it seems that way. His achievements are so staggering that we find them hard to believe. The Telegraph has likened him to a comic book hero. That doesn’t surprise me much; anyone who can run 135 miles through Death Valley in 120 degree heat usually doesn’t bother: they just fly. In tights.
Aside from the costume, Karmazes really is the closest living thing to a superhero. His one weakness, he says, is that, like his Marvel brothers, he thinks he can do anything, that he can’t be beaten, that his desire to push himself to such ridiculous levels might one day bring him down. To me, that seems unlikely: I doubt Mother Nature herself could fashion strength enough to dent this man’s dogged persistence.
Last year, Karnazes ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, finishing with the New York marathon which he duly completed in three hours thirty seconds. He carved a trail across the country and, much like Forrest Gump, garnered loyal disciples along the way - none of whom could stay with him for long, of course. But he got people running. And so the Americans love him for the same reasons they love Anthony Robbins - because he inspires them. They love nothing more than a group high five after a rousing “who’s with me” kind of speech before they settle back in for an afternoon with Jerry Springer and a bag of crisps, perhaps washed down with a litre of sprite. But Karnazes isn’t selling the latest ‘seven steps to success’ guide for those who failed to find it with eight. He inspires simply by doing what he does. By running. And running. And running.
He ran when he was young, too, but it was only after one night sat drunk in a San Francisco bar that he started to run for real. Resisting the urge to vomit, he staggered home that night, took off his trousers, put on a pair of old trainers, and started to run. He didn’t stop all night. In the morning he reached a payphone 30 miles from where he’d set off, called his wife who came to pick him up, and promptly passed out in the back of the car. Karnazes believes he changed that night, that he realised then and there that his body contained limits that he’d never truly explored. What were those limits and how far could he go? These are the kind of questions that now drive Karnazes’ extraordinary existence.
So how does he do it, how can a man run 350 miles straight in three days without sleep? Well, when not competing, his diet is rigorous: grilled salmon five nights a week and no processed or fried foods. Fruit is largely avoided because it contains too much sugar. Come raceday, though, the adage is simple: “The more fat the better”. Fat contains twice as many calories per gram as carbohydrates do, so that means pizza, cheesecake, eclairs, cookies and chocolate. He carries a cellphone on each long run so he can order pizza to pick up further down the road. He also sleeps far less than your average mortal, averaging four hours a night compared to most people’s eight. And make no mistake about it, if you want to be a superhero too then you need to train - hard. Karnazes has done it for so long now that he can wake up on any given day and go out and run a marathon as we might a 3k jog round the block. He has grown accustomed to pain. It makes him happy. And I bet you know exactly what he means. We all know that even the slightest piece of exercise can soothe the soul. It might tire our bodies but it motivates the mind. As Karnazes says, “There is magic in misery”.
But imagine that misery! Imagine the pain. Imagine what it feels like 250 miles in when all you can think of is the 100 that remain. And imagine not being afraid of it all. That’s what it feels like to be a superhero. Or Dean Karnazes.
“He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.” NAPOLEON
Bob Dylan played by a 14 year old Afro-America? Bob Dylan played by Cate Blanchett? Strange, but true. This is Todd Haynes’ brave and inventive new Dylan biopic, I’m Not There, which opened in cinemas last week. Skimming through mostly favourable reviews beforehand, I was expecting confusion. This is a film without a coherent narrative structure in which Dylan’s life is divided up into different periods played by different actors, which are then pieced together as a seemingly incoherent whole. Oh, and neither act goes by the actual name of Bob Dylan. The brilliant Marcus Carl Franklin plays “Woody Guthrie” (a homage to one of Dylan’s great heroes), the ebullient young singer with star-studded ambition; then there is Christian Bale playing Jack Rollins (who later morphs into the devout Pastor John), the early folk singing Dylan; then comes Heath Ledger as Robbie Clark, a renowned actor created to show Dylan’s struggles with fame and, loosely, his relationship with his wife (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg); then, in the most remarkable performance of them all, we are introduced to Blanchett’s Dylan, the drug-riddled and defiant little brat who is forever at war with the press; then it’s Richard Gere, who we’ll come to later; and throughout all this, the last of the Dylans, Ben Whishaw as Arthur Rimbaud, acts as a narrator of sorts and appears at various points throughout the film.
Initially I saw it as a kind of hallucinatory melange, an indistinct patchwork of beautiful pieces, each of them brilliant in their own right, but which, assembled together as a two hour biopic, I couldn’t understand entirely - much like the mysterious Dylan himself. You think you know him, you think you have a handle on one of his many sides, but then another comes along and throws you off the scent. This is particularly true of Richard Gere as Billy the Kid: he turns up as the final Dylan in the jigsaw and totally confounds what you think you’ve figured out as, confused as we are, he walks through his fantastical, Tim Burton-esque country retreat.
Dylan’s life can be split, like the film, into various parts. He reinvented himself a number of times, both musically and in appearance. You could almost say they were clearly defined periods of his career. And they are in the film, too. Just when you thought you might predict what Dylan would do next, he would do the opposite. Just ask those fans that turned up to Newport ’65 expecting to see folk Dylan, only to find electric Dylan. This moment is brilliantly and amusingly imagined in the film with Blanchett and her band gunning down the folk fans with an impressive array of tommy guns. Reinvention is a consistent thread in Haynes’ film, too. But while we can understand each stage on its own, assembled together the man on the inside becomes no more clear than when the movie started. All we know is what we knew already - that Dylan was strange, unpredictable and difficult, but no less fascinating for it. Elusive in life, elusive on film.
But perhaps the narrative is not as loose as others have said it is, or at least as loose as it first appears after watching. It seems to me that, in this film, we glimpse through each of the characters stages of his life that aren’t as incoherent as they first seem; you might almost call it a journey that takes us progressively and unknowingly closer and closer to the real Bob Dylan. There is the initial youthful intent to be famous (Franlkin); his coming of age period featuring his heartfelt folk songs delivered with acoustic panache (Bale); a period of confusion and, perhaps, inner frustration with fame (Ledger); his realisation that a song can’t change a thing and his subsequent stubbornness (Blanchett); and the sadder realisation that, even in the most rural retreat imaginable, away from the glare of the spotlight and press, there is no escaping the inherent ills of modern society. It’s as if what comes across as brashness in the Blanchett scenes - the arrogant denial of the press and his turning his back on folk traditions and its fans - is in fact vindicated by Gere’s experiences as Billy the Kid. After all, if he can’t prevent the construction of a motorway through his remote rural village in person, standing in front of the governor, what hope did he ever have of changing the world with a song? Perhaps this was not the intention - who knows - but Haynes himself has said that Gere’s Dylan most closely resembles the real Dylan, although perhaps not the one we, the public, know best: not the Blood On The Tracks era Dylan, but the quiet and family-oriented Dylan who constantly tours the U.S. and hosts a popular music radio show on satellite radio. This is the life he eventually chose, not one of the ‘mini-lives’ played out to us in I’m Not There, the lives for which he is undoubtedly more famous. Haynes himself agrees:
"I would argue that there are more albums associated with Dylan's interest in roots music, country music, American folklore and, basically, the history of the American popular song than there are albums that reflect the urban, political, '60s-era period that made him famous. It's just an essential and inescapable aspect of his imagination and creative life and sustenance."
For me, then, aside from the sheer richness of the content, the audacity of the idea, and the quality of the cinematography, the peculiarity and brilliance of this film is that where it becomes most confusing and seemingly unreal, with Gere and Billy the Kid, it in fact becomes more real than ever. And so we leave thinking we don’t know Dylan any more than we did - and yet, deep down, perhaps we do.
Were he alive, you could bet your life that Ryszard Kapuściński would be in the thick of the current unrest in Kenya after Mwai Kibaki was officially re-elected last week amidst claims of fraud from opposition leader Raila Odinga. News surfaced yesterday of 30 people burned to death in a church they hoped might provide them with shelter. Some 300 or so are confirmed dead in total, and that number continues to rise. This is the bad side of Africa, the volatility, the clan mentality, the violence; and all this in one of the continent’s most stable countries. As Desmond Tutu said today, “”This is a country that has been held up as a model of stability.” No longer.
Kapuściński thrived in such situations. A Polish war correspondent responsible for some 50 countries during the 60s and 70s, a period during which, one by one, African countries gained their independence, he covered wars and political and social situations in Africa (and other parts of the world, too), but he did it in such a way that, far from keeping us away, in fact pulled readers closer and closer to Africa. He understood its nuances, its differences, its cultures, its tribes, its climate, its people. And he loved them all.
So what? Well, I mention Kapuściński for three reasons. Firstly, because we’re approaching the first anniversary of his death this month. Secondly, because of what’s happening in Kenya as I write. And thirdly, because I returned from Kenya only four days ago, and while out there I read The Shadow of the Sun, Kapuściński’s 2001 chronicle of his experiences across the continent since the end of colonialism. It’s one of the most moving and heartfelt books I’ve read in a long, long time and remarkable in many ways, not least in the risks he took to be at the heart of some pretty dangerous situations. Getting into Zanzibar a day after the revolution of 1964 kicked off was one thing (he was the first journalist to get into the country - no one else was allowed in and anyone who tried had their transportation shot at), but getting out a week later to cover the sudden revolts in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika was quite another. Nobody was allowed to leave the island at the time. He and a handful of journalists who’d eventually found a way onto the island now needed a way out. An old man offered to sell them a small motorboat. They would leave at night, so as to avoid the sight of gunmen littered around the coast, and they’d head for the African mainland - 70 kilometres or so. Together they set off, creeping down to the mooring and aiming due West for Tanganyika. By morning, after a failed engine, impossibly high seas, rain, and desperate prayers aimed skywards, they somehow arrived back on the coast of Zanzibar just a little further along from where they’d originally set off - although relieved to be alive. Determination, it seems, was something Kapuściński did not lack.
But nor do most war journalists. It’s part and parcel of the game. What makes Kapuściński more remarkable than the majority, though, is his ability to package his experiences so eruditely and beautifully, in such a way that war becomes strangely incidental in the face of the real Africa: the brilliant fauvist landscape of colour, people and culture. From the very first line of the book, you know you’re in the grip of a writer who knows how to put into words a place that many have found too difficult to define:
“More than anything, one is struck by the light. Light everywhere. Brightness everywhere. Everywhere, the sun. Just yesterday, an autumnal London was drenched in rain. The airplane drenched in rain. A cold wind, darkness. But here, from the morning’s earliest moments, the airport is ablaze with sunlight, all of us in sunlight.”
Step off a plane anywhere in Africa and you know precisely what he means.
Where beach sport meets pure artistry look out for the latest waterfront craze of Bossaball. Combining the skills of football, volleyball, gymnastics and capoeira is no mean feat, and these guys do it whilst adding in a bit of dance and drama for creative flair.
Bossaball is possibly one of the most random sports in the world but damn it's impressive. To summarise, it involves a volleyball shaped court, made out of inflatables. The part of the inflatable nearest the net is furnished with a small trampoline, and the forward players for each team bounce around on them looking to make the ultimate smash…which can include some pretty spectacular 20ft high overhead kicks. The players at the back, meanwhile, boing around, maintaining the ball in play with a combination of keepy ups, headers, and volleyball style punches. Whilst all this is going on the referee, who also acts as MC and DJ, compares, spins samba tracks and sometimes throws in percussion for good measure, forming a rhythm to the whole play.
It is a visual delight to observe, and exhilarating to play.. if you’ve got the balls to throw yourself in the air and pray that is. Clubs are popping up all over the world with Brazil, Belgium, Spain, Singapore and England all getting involved.. Check out this YouTube video to see the real deal in practice and watch out for it at the festivals this summer!
A record + a camera + a short period with nothing else to do + a little imagination = a hilarious collection of photos...
Check out more of them here.
