I cannot believe it is 3 years since we went to the last one... that was the day we took the boys and they discovered the joys of a cafe which sold Nutella flavoured milkshakes - and other delights.... next time we went it had stopped doing them - and this time it had closed down, replace by a very basic looking tapas bar.
There is something wrong with Folkestone - a writer I met last week at a party was agreeing on this - she was largely brought up and educated there - it hasn't had the big wash of DFL's that Thanet has had. It is also very large and spread out - full of enormous Edwardian houses - not a lot of the sort of comfortable domestic buildings that appeal to retired groovy people, in the case of the Regency ones, or growing families in the case of the Victorian ones, in Ramsgate.
There is also the topography - somehow the lower town and the harbour seem very separate from the upper area with the Leas etc. Of course they are not, but they still feel like two different places.
We arrived about 11.30 and got a map and went to see the sights, and very underwhelming they were too...the map is a rather confusing one - some of the things were simply marking places where various things were happening - or had happened, since this was the penultimate day. We saw the exterior of an Andy Goldsworthy installation - cracked mud on a shop window - delightful. I love his work - but this was a disappointing example. Not sufficiently transient! We spent time looking at statuettes of people made with a 3-D printer... interestingish... which had attached wishes on them - all virtually identical, which I suppose should tell me something about human life, but it seemed a rather banal project. Since when did every art project have to have wishes attached - I've seen 3 or 4 of these all over the place - and we've even had a thing like this in Ramsgate. Why wishes? Is this the only way we can get people to engage...
There were various series of things - Yoko Ono ladders - which we couldn't find easily, so didn't bother, a nice little shelter called Steve, another site marking the River Pent (5 of these, we saw 1),another site where there was nothing. And the Ian Hamilton Finlay words on the lighthouse
There is something wrong with Folkestone - a writer I met last week at a party was agreeing on this - she was largely brought up and educated there - it hasn't had the big wash of DFL's that Thanet has had. It is also very large and spread out - full of enormous Edwardian houses - not a lot of the sort of comfortable domestic buildings that appeal to retired groovy people, in the case of the Regency ones, or growing families in the case of the Victorian ones, in Ramsgate.
There is also the topography - somehow the lower town and the harbour seem very separate from the upper area with the Leas etc. Of course they are not, but they still feel like two different places.
We arrived about 11.30 and got a map and went to see the sights, and very underwhelming they were too...the map is a rather confusing one - some of the things were simply marking places where various things were happening - or had happened, since this was the penultimate day. We saw the exterior of an Andy Goldsworthy installation - cracked mud on a shop window - delightful. I love his work - but this was a disappointing example. Not sufficiently transient! We spent time looking at statuettes of people made with a 3-D printer... interestingish... which had attached wishes on them - all virtually identical, which I suppose should tell me something about human life, but it seemed a rather banal project. Since when did every art project have to have wishes attached - I've seen 3 or 4 of these all over the place - and we've even had a thing like this in Ramsgate. Why wishes? Is this the only way we can get people to engage...
There were various series of things - Yoko Ono ladders - which we couldn't find easily, so didn't bother, a nice little shelter called Steve, another site marking the River Pent (5 of these, we saw 1),another site where there was nothing. And the Ian Hamilton Finlay words on the lighthouse
We couldn't see the lighthouse up close - because it is not accessible - but it looked quite nice. We could see it as we had lunch at the bar in Rocksalt. IHF is a household god - although I think he was probably a bit of a bugger - any one who can apparently idolise Saint- Just the way he did must be slightly deranged. However his work is aesthetically pleasing and there is no nonsense about "narrative". He also wrote books - he knew where narrative properly belonged!
I rather object to the way that visual culture is trying to muscle in on literary culture - it wishes to claim "narrative" for entirely unmoving and unchanging objects. I suppose objects "tell a story" - but it is not enough to plonk an object down and expect it to do so. The "narrative" is in they eye of the beholder... the artist isn't really doing much except pointing. Blimey - I am in the wrong job - I spend all this time and energy writing a blog that "points" at things - when really I ought to be a conceptual artist. I say a dozen amusing and thought provoking things a week to various friends and family members, and no one pays me a penny for this. If I could learn to create a visual equivalent I could be quids in! Maybe it is time I became a conceptual artist!
One thing I loved was a shop devoted to the Stuckists - I don't think it was part of the triennial... someone had plonked an old "safe" (geddit?) outside the shop - safe art! Well, hardly.
The final part of the venture was an installation called Vigil. You can read about it here http://www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk/artist/alex-hartley/ because I can't be arsed to describe it. What is amusing is our slightly literal take on it. Mark assumed that since the thing was situated high up, part of the experience was a wonderful view... we both supposed that one could go and visit it. This was extremely difficult and challenging. First we had to enter the hotel - I was going to ask how to reach the site at the reception desk but it was full of rather poor looking pensioners. Also Mark urged me into a lift. I was subsumed with a sort of scent-memory of cheap hotels I'd stayed in. The glorious red carpet with its gold braid pattern was also familiar. I was back in the now demolished Hotel Esplanade in Bournemouth in 1963...The smells were institutional - not dissimilar to a care home... i.e. stale mass catering and a sort of musty, mouldy human smell. It appeared that a lot of people could actually be living there. The entrance hall was filled with slot machines, and building works. There were signs to different "wings" giving it a prison like feel.
The lift went to the 6th floor - we got out and walked to the 7th floor. I went on strike while Mark explored - he found a different lift that went to the 12th floor - from there we walked up to the 13th floor - saw the tiny cramped lobby with four doors - each labelled "Premier Suite" - one had a notice about the Vigil installation and said "No admission to unauthorised personnel"... we knocked on the door a few times, but there was no payoff for our persistence. M had really only wanted to see the view. There was a good view from a window on the next landing. We enjoyed that for a while, until I was distracted by two young girls wading around the harbour - despite the incoming tide. The water was below their knees when they left the edge of the harbour, and headed out to the area beyond the viaduct - it was harder for them getting back, they were doubtful about getting around the buttress which marks the spot where the River Pent goes into the sea. This time the water was up to their waists as they tide had come in a great deal in the ten minutes or so since we'd been watching them from the hotel tower. This was quite a dramatic incident - another middle aged couple were watching them with anxiety too. They were clearly local girls - no parents around - but not very aware of the tide - or perhaps they were and that was part of the adventure. Neither our visit to knock the door, or the girls jeopardy around the harbour got a mention in the Vigil blog. Unimpressed!
Then we went home - lay on the sofa, drank tea and read the Guardian... a pleasure!
 |
| Saint-Just - quite a looker really. |
No comments:
Post a Comment