itourist?

they’re up. some of them anyway. there have been a few setbacks which, apparently, is quite common in the billboard business. inclement weather’s a big deal apparently. as you might imagine no-one wants to be putting posters up in the pissing rain. got back from prague this afternoon. But will have to return some time soon. got the 7.25am flight yesterday and just as I was being handed the keys for the rental car at prague airport andrew got a text from london saying that they might not all be up until tomorrow. we were due to fly back the next morning. except the sender of said text couldn’t be sure until the billboard people emerged from their morning meeting. two and half hours later we decided not to extend our stay until the following evening – mainly because of the cost – and drove up to the E55, on the off chance we’d find something worth documenting. fortunately they had put up up the biggest image, pictures of which i’ll be posting as soon as i get a chance. it’s pretty impressive ! what’s particularly interesting though is the fact that it’s on a very fast highway – the main route out of cz to germany. as such, any roadside images – they’re fairly sporadic – tend to make a very fleeting impression. as for text, it’s all very much in your face, for obvious reasons – no time for subtleties at 140 km per hour. however, despite all the discussions about text size etc (see below) i think the text on our poster is probably still too small. the road’s just too fast for it. but when night fall’s it could be different. the billboard’s illuminated and it’s very large – looms over the highway. unfortunately we didn’t actually get to see it at night. we got busted by czech police for parking on the hard shoulder. another problem, there’s nowhere else to park. so that was that. last time we were in cz we got busted for driving the wrong way up a one way street. which was nice.

paul antick edit: i have no idea whether they’re up or not – the prague billboards i mean. should call hana and find out. for some reason though i rather like the idea of turning up there on monday morning and finding 10×20ft blank blue spaces where Holocaust tourists should be. syd can’t make the trip so i’m taking andrew kearney instead. itourist? featured on the bbc’s regional news show, south today last night; also featured on the beeb’s ‘look hampshire’ web site. very flattering i’m sure. i guess that makes me a z-list celebrity… for about 2 weeks, which is how long it’ll remain posted. but that’s ok. i don’t want to eat alligator penis. was scouring the web earlier and came across an artist’s website. she’s just started blogging but apparently feels a bit awkward because it smacks so much of ‘vanity’ – i did this, i thought that etc. true i guess. but let’s be honest, what in the world of fine art doesn’t? anyway, why does vanity always get such bad press? besides which if people get fed up reading someone’s blog then i suspect they log out and go and get fed up somewhere else instead. i think i need a holiday.

paul antick edit: hectic couple of weeks. mainly concerned with sorting out the prague billboards. without wishing to go into too much detail – !!!! – things have stopped, started, stalled then started again at such a rate i’m not sure whether my nervous system is going to withstand the strain. although it does look now like everything is ready to go. in short, the money transfer to prague didn’t go as smoothly as might have been expected. also, confidence media – the billboard company – were understandably loathe to commence preparing the artwork before receiving the money. the start date, however, is the 1st. it’s the 28th today and i’m not sure that they’re going to be up in time. still, they have the money and after finally ironing out a few technical hitches, which were doubly baffling owing to my inability to speak czech, things look ready to go. hopefully the images will be off to the printers today. they might even be ready by friday. to be honest i’ll be happy if they’re up by monday morning which is when syd and i fly out to document them. will post up images if and when i get them. interesting to reflect on the differences between the advertising infrastructure in cz and uk, one of the things that has held things up, that and various other unmentionables…

is there anything heroic about a billboard? probably not. not in the west. it remains for many the apotheosis of banality. in contrast to the art object – that which is explicitly so, an ‘Art object’ i mean – the position occupied by the billboard in the symbolic hierarchy of the visual is way down there. although not exclusively commercial, the billboard site is pure commerce. a pass-by event. yet despite its ephemerality, its ‘forgetability’, the billboard remains closely regulated. in stamford hill, for instance, it is forbidden – at least by JC Deceaux and Clear Channel – to erect billboards that show any flesh. presumably to avoid offending the ultra-orthodox jewish community. In the czech republic you are not allowed to show anything that refers to cigarettes, alcohol, politics, sex and ‘jenis’ (!?). and then there’s benetton’s infamous baby not to mention sophie dahl. masturbating, apparently. the furore over the baby picture always fascinated me. a salient reminder not only of the codes and conventions that govern the production of the ‘street’, but also the ways in which images of women are often unconsciously regulated, strangled at birth. in 1992 when the benetton image appeared on bilboards in britain the advertising standards authority received so many complaints about it; a bloody newborn still attached to its absent mother – whose body we are refused by the crop of the image – that it advised the advertiser to withdraw it. was it really the image of a traumatised (i.e. just born) baby that was so objectionable, or perhaps, in fact, the image of the mother, which is not present but which is easily imagined? in the throws of birth, blood, shit and sweat. naomi she is not. the billboard is a sacred space (ripe for play), easily defiled (if only for a very short space of time), thanks to the indirect nature of the conditions of regulation. the billboard companys’ relationship with the billboard image is often quite cursory. blase, just like the passerby’s?

I’ve now done two presentations on itourist? in the last two days. both to groups of students at middlesex university – undergraduates on ‘the cultural life of things’ and some MA fine art students today. i suppose i’m using these sessions to rehearse for the presentations at MoDA and John Hansard. i thought i’d record them but i couldn’t get the mini-disc machine to work. it’s getting to the point where i tend to avoid talking about the images at all. to be honest i’m fed up looking at them – to the point where any meaning they might have had for me has been more or less evacuated. instead, i spent the best part of yesterday’s session talking about the photographing people in poland and germany, and today discussing the process of putting a project like this together. nuts and bolts. i was sat on the 26 bus the other day – travelling up the hackney road, listening to music on my ipod – when i glanced out the window. i saw twiggy. needless to say, she didn’t see me. it was an M&S ad. i didn’t dwell on it – but something (perhaps many things) registered. which is possibly the way it is with billboards. an entirely different mode of engagement compared to the gallery for instance, where one is under an obligation to dwell, and pass comment (consciously pass comment), if not to another then at least to oneself. an encounter with a 10×20ft billboard tends to be a very different kind of event. the way of seeing tends to be cursory, blase. cool, yet often rather absorbing. and the more i dwell on my own billboard images – which i do in front of a screen, in my office or at syd’s studio – the more profoundly alienated i become, from the billboards, from what i imagine will be the actuality of their everyday existence. and the more alienated i become – which is to say the more ‘interested’ i am in them, the more preoccupied i become with design details, all of which will register – the more fruitless – it seems to me – are any attempts i might make at explaining or accounting for whatever it is these images might actually come to mean or represent. it seems, in part, to be a question of time.

paul antick edit (as are all these blogs):

the authorship issues’s an interesting one here. because it’s an art project, and, as such, demands some kind of named author, preferably an individual, noone involved has thus far questioned the fact that my name should be the designated name of the ‘author’. it is the case that the project originated with me and has largely been sustained by – for want of a better word – my ‘enthusiasm’ for it. however, whether any of this justifies my referring to myself as the author, or the project referring to me as such, i’m not sure. apart from the numerous individuals who have had a significant – if not a directorial – input i have to say that syd shelton (designer) might as well be referred to as co-author, certainly of the billboards. i say this now because we, or he, perhaps we (!/images/medium/missing_file.gif(Missing resource ’?), have come up with some redesigned versions of the billboards which i’ll be posting on this website soon. we have taken on board various remarks made about the size of the title text and increased it accordingly, whilst reducing the size of the website address. in addition, tacking along the side of the posters we have the legend: ‘photography: paul antick, design syd shelton’. so i guess that settles it’)! which is perhaps to say that the authorship of each of the project’s constituent parts – posters, website, symposia – tends to be rather fluid. perhaps then ‘editor’ would be a better word than ‘author’.

spoke to a journalist today at the jewish chronicle. asking me questions about the project over the phone. for some reason i got rather tongue tied – perhaps because there were no easy answers. at least nothing that came to mind, right there and then. no juicy soundbites. so i asked her to email me the questions which she kindly did. they’re the obvious kind of questions really, but they really proved very useful to me. i wonder what they’ll do with the replies?

here’s the interview:

Here are the questions I’d like to put to you:

What inspired the project?

originally I had a very vague idea about the notion of ‘jewish space’ – spaces which, historically have in some way become associated with jewish experience and identity. As such I began my travels in israel and palestine but ended up in eastern europe. I could just as easily have gone to north africa, iraq, india or florida I suppose. another time maybe.

What is the reason for the sorts of images you’re using? What kind of reaction do you hope them to inspire?

I’m not sure what I hope to ‘inspire’. A conversation perhaps. An argument. An exchange of ideas. I can’t think of anything better than that really.

What do you hope to achieve with the project?

this is difficult. I’m not sure that a project like this can really ‘achieve’ that much. If it can achieve anything at all then perhaps raising some potentially awkward questions about the ways in which we represent the Holocaust to ourselves -= how we do it, why we do it the way we do might be one thing. Raising questions about the nature of consumer culture, the ways in which it aestheticizes an event as traumatic as the Holocaust and the ethical consequences of this might be another.

How did you go about setting it up?

I proposed a billboard project to numerous galleries and john hansard gallery in southampton, together with the parkes institute, and the czech center for contemporary art kindly agreed to support it. middlesex university have also been extremely supportive, prof. Adrian rifkin in particular. since then I’ve been frantically liaising with billboard companies, working with syd shelton on the design, organising the conference – jorneys through the holocaust – which coincides with the campaign as well as doing the day job. I’m a lecturer.

Which Holocaust sites have you visited? What was your response to them?

I spent 3 weeks during summer 2004 travelling around germany, poland and the czech republic. During this period I visited various places associated, in one way or another, with the Holocaust – wannsee villa, hitler’s bunker, auschwitz-birkenau, chelmno, sobibor, belzec, madjanak and theresienstadt. In visiting these places it became clear to me that all of them have, to varying degrees, become important tourist destinations (auschwitz and theresienstadt in particular). As such I became interested in precisely how and with what consequences places like these – which seem to completely militate against any ideas of ‘leisure’ and ‘pleasure’ – might in some perverse way actually accommodate or even positively sustain such ideas.

my own response was very complicated indeed, which is to say rather fragmented.

First of all, I visited these sites as a ‘photographer’ or ‘artist’ and in some ways my identity as a ‘photographer’ coloured my responses to these spaces. First off, I was walking around with a photographer’s head on – a convenient distancing device perhaps. I wasn’t wandering around thinking about the atrocities that occurred there, or at least I don’t / didn’t think I was!.

in fact, what did occur there is actually so profoundly foreign to me, probably because it is so unimaginably terrible, that to actually imagine what went on…well, why on earth would I be doing such a thing? Why did I do such a thing? And if I did – which I probably did – in what ways did I find it satisfying? After all, if I – like many others – did imagine such things then presumably I needed to do so. Why is that? What kind of ‘pleasures’ did I derive from such thoughts, from such an experience?

Perhaps any ‘pleasure’ I did derive is not entirely removed from the ways in which these places are represented – or narrativised. There is certainly something of the horror movie about these places which is hardly surprising given how, and how much, they have been discussed, visualised etc. Curiously, for me going to auschwitz was a bit like going to new york. Like stepping into a grotesque fairy tale , a movie set. why? Because my understanding of these places depends to a large extent on all of the movies and books about these places that I’ve encountered. Sophie’s choice, schindler’s list, holocaust etc. And when things are translated into popular stories and films they invariably rely on certain formal devices to sustain the viewer/reader’s interest; suspense, excitement, heroes, villains etc., all of which are, paradoxically, completely irrelevant when it comes to what I imagine was the reality of a place like auschwitz. A reality I tend to base on the writings and films of people like primo levi, lawrence langer and claude lanzmann.

for some reason – which i’m not entirely sure of – I don’t think I would have felt comfortable with myself had I indulged those kinds of thoughts and imaginings. (I say this now, but I probably felt very comfortable doing so then.) Of course, you can’t help but do so at places like these. In fact thanks to the ways in which most of these places are administered you don’t have much choice. So I guess, like everyone else, I did. (this is what I mean about a complicated response – I think I thought or felt something then but now, in retrospect, I realise that perhaps I didn’t, or did, or both)

Likewise, perhaps because I wasn’t directly implicated in the Holocaust, I think I would have felt equally uncomfortable then about being excessively moved or upset by such places. Or at least being seen to be so. Paradoxically there seems to me to be something profoundly disrespectful about the parading of one’s own grief at places like these. (I should stress that i’m not talking about survivors or their immediate families and friends. This, I think, is a very different category of experience.) at least now, sitting here, I think that’s how I should have felt. I know this probably sounds a bit odd, but for me experiencing such feelings would – I think now – in some way suggest – perhaps to myself – that I am as much a part of the exterminations, the horror etc. as the people who actually were. As such I’d feel like some kind of emotional carpetbagger – exploiting their experiences, their tragedy etc. for my own rather weird reasons. I’ve no wish to do that. In fact I can’t think of anything worse. Or perhaps the reason I didn’t feel moved (if in fact I didn’t) was because I refused to let myself be moved by what, in my own mind, had for a moment become completely eclipsed by the idea of ‘auschwitz the movie set’. How could I allow myself to be moved by a mere ‘movie set’? Which of course it isn’t, yet is. Whether I want it to be or not. I don’t know, but I’m glad you asked the question!

I already had in mind the fact that I wanted to produce a body of work that would in some way allude to the contemporary cultural uses of the Holocaust. In other words, I didn’t want to comment on the Holocaust itself – what happened at these places 60 years ago – but rather, on what is happening there today. Several writers have commented in some detail on the ideological uses of the idea of the Holocaust since the end of the war – peter novick and james young, for example – and I guess this project is an extension of that. Except here I’m deliberately framing the Holocaust in relation to the commodity or entertainment form (which in many ways it now is) – the images themselves and the spaces they appear in obviously reference the world of advertising. However, this is not to say that I think that the commodification of the Holocaust – turning auschwitz into what the historian tim cole calls, ‘auschwitzland’ – necessarilly means that the ways in which visitors or tourists’ experience these places is tainted. In fact I’ve no idea. I’ m not sure that i know what a ‘tainted’ experience of these places might be. (I’m sure that many people would be apalled by the nature of my own experience). In the same way that I don’t know what an authentically ‘jewish’ experience of these places might be, now at the beginning of the 21st century. I suspect that both types of experience are extremely complicated and I guess that might be the point of this project – to complicate matters. In much the same way that primo levi (with his concept of ‘the gray zone’ in the drowned and the saved’ and charlotte delbo, for instance, complicated our understanding of what exactly went on in these places 6o years ago.

I understand there is to be a publication in 2007 – what will this consist of?

I’m still working on this but basically it will be an artist’s book consisting of images of the billboards, a revised version of an essay I wrote for ‘informal architecture’, a canadian publication; some material from the itourist? Website – visitor’s blogs – and various other bits and pieces.

paul antick edit:

spent the morning at syd’s studio discussing redesign of billboards. a photographer friend of his dropped in – former photojournalist on the sunday times. he liked the project but suggested that we make the title text bigger. ‘nice pictures. nice design, but i want to know what it’s all about. explode the text!’ interesting to compare his thoughts on this with the director of a canadian art gallery who, when i mentioned the possibility of making the references to holocaust sites more explicit, persuaded me to err on the side of discretion. which is not to say that in Art subtlety is always all and that in the world of gung-ho political photojournalism it rarely is…as for me, i’m stuck in the middle with…

a paul antick edit: working on the symposium flyer with syd. title of the symposium was orginally ‘Journeys through the ‘holocaust’’. main reason for the ‘journeys through’ bit is that it allows – or at least justifies – our efforts at inclusivity. richard w hill is doing something on the genocide of native americans and we plan to screen elle flanders’ feature length movie, ‘zero degrees of separation’ which examines the israel/palestine conflict from the point of view of two gay couples living in israel (palestinian man with israeli man / palestinian woman with israeli woman). the word ‘holocaust’ is in parentheses in order to indicate a concern with the H/holocaust as a contemporary discursive and ideological phenomena, as opposed to the event itself, which is to say, the ‘Holocaust’. in other words the symposium, like the billboards, is concerned with representations of the Holocaust as opposed to the thing itself. having said all that i woke up in a panic at 2 this morning worried about the fact that the parentheses might be misconstrued. that they might be taken to mean that we are of the opinion that the Holocaust has only ever existed at the level of representation – that the thing itself never actually happened. i wrote to someone at the parkes institute for advice and they wisely, i think, advised me to get rid of the parentheses and convert the little ‘h’ to a big ‘H’. as he rightly said, ‘we could be inviting a lot of unnecessary hassle.’ although i agree, i can’t help feeling disappointed. that said, syd’s done a great job on the flyer.

another paul antick edit: interesting thing. art director working for large advertising agency peruses the billboards. his initial response is ‘kinda nice, i suppose’. when he’s directed to the text – auschwitz birkenau, chelmno etc – he revises his opinion and declares the project ‘scandalous’. how ‘serious’ he was about its capacity to scandalize, i don’t know. whatever, it has made me think about the size of the title text. i’m meeting with syd – the designer – on monday to discuss any revisions we might want to make to the original design. maybe increase the size of the type. make it more visible. after all, if someone looking at the images on a screen has to be redirected to the text there isn’t much chance that your average motorist is going notice it. pedestrians on the other hand…

once again this is not susan pui san lok blogging but paul antick – still having problems with my password, need to check that one out. a lots’s happened since i last blogged much of which needs to be formally entered somewhere on this site – when i get the chance! the billboards angle’s falling into place largely thanks to hannah and aoife, who have been liaising heroically with the czechs, and iain donaldson at clear channel who last week took me round various sites in southampton and today secured options on four billboards. now i need to sort out london which i intend to do tomorrow. will speak more anon…

before i start i should say that this blog has been posted by paul antick not susan pui san lok (the system doesn’t seem to recognise my password…again!).

things are looking good in cz. hannah and aoife returned from prague yesterday where they met various billboard people who will be mailing me relevant billboard info, including maps, images etc, all of which i’ll post on this site.

at present i’m starting work on another grant application. i have to say that i find these incredibly intimidating. although, having said that, there have been several grant workshops at mdx that i could have attended but didn’t. although having said that, as most university employees would probably attest, it isn’t always that easy to find the time to teach, do admin. – i presently manage more than 900 students – and research. having said that, it does beat an awful lot of other jobs…at least that’s what i keep telling myself. you know, how lucky i am to be doing it etc. etc. and the harder it is the more vocal i get; ‘i do have a wonderful job, i do, i do, i do….dont i?’

’...it is not Auschwitz that necessarily makes the impact of the (holocaust) ‘sublime’ meaningful, but the reciprocal relation that exists between Auschwitz the site, those stories about Auschwitz that are disseminated at Auschwitz, and that body of discourse within which the pilgrim is already enmeshed prior to his or her actual visit, Together, the site, those stories and that discourse render the sublime intelligible, which is to say, they lend it some measure of cultural value.’ me, ‘auschwitz: who goes there?’

thinking about what kinds of writings to include in possible itourist? publication. i’ve published extracts from an essay that’s due to appear in anthony kiendl’s ‘informal architectures’ on this site (go to text, it’s not all there just some bits n’ pieces). the above comment is taken from that. i think i should think more about what kinds of mass media holocaust related imagery our notional ‘pilgrim’ has been immersed in, as well as art work that critically deals with this – i’m thinking of the death camp lego, can’t remember who did it but it is a particualr favourite of mine. also like to think about some of the things lennon and fowley talk about in ‘dark tourism’ (see blog 9) particularly re: the material validation of knowledge acquired through the mass media. am also thinking of going back to auschwitz – perhaps as part of the kind of trip griselda pollock mentions at the start of her essay – and writing it up as an extended blog entry.

snippet from lennon and fowley’s ‘dark tourism: the attraction of death and disaster’, (Thomson Learning, London, 2004):

‘the critical features apparent in the phenomena (‘dark tourism’) are, first, that global communications technologies play a major part in creating the initial interest…; second, that the objects of dark tourism themselves appear to introduce anxiety and doubt about the project of modernity (e.g. the use of ‘rational planning’ and technological innovation to undertake the jewish holocaust…); third, the educative elements of sites are accompanied by elements of commodification and a commercial ethic which (whether explicit or implicit) accepts that visitation (whether purposive or incidental) is an opportunity to develop a tourism product.’ pp11

‘if film has offered alternative, revised or more ‘realistic’ accounts of news events (e.g. JFK; apocalypse now; shoah) throughout the twentieth century, then the events themselves have (apparently) come closer to us in space and time. in this sense, experiencing immediate news events, or critical reflection upon recent cataclysmic events, at, or near, home brings populations to the intersection between the local and the global. can it be surprising that, when the opportunity presents itself to validate that global-local connection that so many decide to visit the sites of these deaths and disasters?’ pp9

pursue the point about validation? any thoughts?

interesting snippet from a review of hip-hop hassid, matisyahu’s gig at the hammersmith palais: ‘the combination of his unique voice, rocky guitar riffs and throbbing dub bass lines kept the crowd moving, although a few tracks had an air of lazily catchy commercial reggae…nonetheless, some people just didn’t get it. ‘he doesn’t sound jewish at all!’ complained one woman to her husband who was dancing intensely, his hand periodically darting up to his head to prevent his traditional skullcap falling off.’

chris elwell-sutton, ‘hassidic star whose reggae is anything but orthodox’, evening standard, 23.05.06 pp19

same day, anne karpf writing in the guardian: ‘katherine klinger, 47, education officer at the wiener library and daughter of jewish refugees…set up the second generation trust to organise meetings and conferences between the children of refugees and (holocaust) survivors and the children of (nazi) perpetrators…strongest criticism of the project came not from refugee families…but from anglo-jews without first-hand experience of the holocaust. they would say, ‘don’t you think it’s time to put all that stuff behind us?’ and ‘isn’t it a bit early to meet with the other side?’ and not see a contradiction between the two. they seem to want to hang on to a more frozen relationship with germany – to be forever the victim…’

‘freezing our relationship with germany in the nazi era hinders rather than helps us understand the past: it’s the difference between grievance and grieving. anti-german grievance is louder, more petulant and self-serving; authentic grief about the holocaust is quieter and less showy. similarly demanding guilt from the germans isn’t the same as wanting remorse, an emotion that can be put to more productive use such as various kinds of reparation.’

anne karpf, ‘time to move on’, the guardian, 23.05.06, pp12-15

“the flaneur is the travelling player. he carries his playing with him, wherever he goes. his game is a solitaire…His play is to make others play, to see others as players, to make the world a play. And in this play which he makes the world to be, he is in full control…In the dramas he imagines as he wanders, he is the sole mover, scriptwriter, director, discerning spectator and critic. To flaner is to play the game of playing; a meta play of sorts. This play is conscious of itself as play…Or one may say; the job of the flaneur is to rehearse the world as a theatre, life as a play”

Zygmunt Baumann, pp145-146, see ref. below.

see Melanie Manchot’s russia pictures (crowd shots)

“to be in control, foucault told us, is to see without being seen… being an actor in the play of crowd is to pretend that there are no spectators and that one is not a spectator oneself. the art the flaneur masters is that of seeing without being caught looking.’

Zygmunt Baumann, pp141, see ref. below

On photography, or photographing:

Zygmunt Bauman, 'Desert Spectacular' in (ed.) Keith Tester, The Flaneur, (Routledge, London & New York, 2004) pp-140-142

On photography, or photographing:

Zygmunt Bauman, 'Desert Spectacular' in (ed.) Keith Tester, The Flaneur, (Routledge, London & New York, 2004) pp-140-142

i’ve been discussing the possibility of turning the study day at MODA into some kind of extended educational event / project involving primary and secondary school kids. it’s still at the planning stage and secondary school involvement will depend on various things coming together…however, jim grant – artist, fellow traveller on the bungalow blitz project, and a school teacher in hackney – is very keen for his primary kids to get involved. we discussed some ideas this evening.

i have to say that whilst i don’t find the idea of working with older kids very daunting i really have no idea where to begin with little ones. anyway, we thought of various ways of approaching it. one thing that came up was the idea of ‘opposites’, or – for the older kids – ‘contradictions’. jim talked about the billboard images – something i tend to avoid for some reason. he suggested that any tension in the photographs might in part be derived from the contradictory relationship that obtains between the environments, and their naming – ‘auschwitz’, ‘sobibor’ etc. and the ways in which these environments, and the people in them, are photographically rendered. both the style of photography and the ways in which the people in the photographs present themselves to the viewer are arguably quite incongruous with the idea of the holocaust. that is with the idea of the event itself, what occured sixty years ago, as opposed perhaps to the ‘holocaust’, which is to say the particular kind of ‘event’ it has since become. indeed it is precisely because the ‘holocaust’, as a contemporary cultural phenomena – spectacle? – is potentially an extremely complex thing, intellectually, experientially, ideologically and politically that it perhaps demands to be represented as such. that is, in ways that deliberately set out to complicate things.

whilst the secondary school kids might specifically touch on some of the more obvious issues that the holocaust inevitably raises – this wont be difficult given the ethnically diverse demographic in enfield and barnet – primary school pupils will probably be encouraged to think about 2 things that do not explicitly reference the holocaust itself. first, the way that we can use images to create a story about ourselves – a basic lesson in theories of representation, sesame street style!/images/medium/missing_file.gif(Missing resource ’ and second, the coexistence of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. which is to say encouraging them to think of ways in which they might represent this in a unified visual environment. how ‘good’ feelings, which become objectified and articulated through ‘good’ images (barbies, remote controlled cars etc.), might enter into a dialogue with ‘bad’ ones (scary places?). incidentally there are several reasons why it probably wouldn’t be appropriate to bang on too much about the holocaust to a group of five year olds. one of which is the fact that many of the kids at jim’s school have come from places where the kinds of things that ocurred in poland sixty years are for them, tragically, not all that unfamiliar. which i guess is a potential minefield (‘)!!) in itself. any thoughts?

spent yesterday doing tourist things in london. it’s not unusual for me to feel like a stranger in london – depending on which bit i happen to be in. i don’t feel strange on mare street or brick lane for example. but i feel positively alien at canary wharf shopping plaza. my friend, who has lived in london for eight years but isn’t english remarked that she felt exactly like a tourist. how could she not? we’d taken a boat trip from greenwich to the tower of london. for some reason we found the spectacle of four new york hassids posing in front of the tower very amusing. why is that? they weren’t smiling.