Arto Fronto Bastardo (Featuring Arto Shito)

Art Front are expecting us to manage and present the opening party/art event, which is fine but there seems to be no budget and no one to help. They are insistent that we give them a complete plan of what we are doing only no one turns up for the meeting to hear about it. They also want to bill us for the cost of the event which I laughingly dismiss, however it comes back. This is confusing, how does this work again, we pay to do a n opening for them, it’s like doing a project for Folly gallery in Lancaster ie they have no skills, no money but many demands and you end up paying for thier dinner and they don't say thank you. Additionally we are informed that we are going to be billed for the cost of the car and there is some discussion about billing us for the use of the house. It is becoming clear that the bandits in this piece are Art Front, the programme invades the countryside and ravages man and beast, local and artist, raping and pillaging like the bandits of yore.

Marcus and Barnaby start to discuss giving the Triennale serious art product, what the triennale want, again the scene from the film comes to mind, just walk away, don't challenge. Jamie, Ben and I talk against this capitulation, Marcus and Barnaby want to make a good impression on the art world in attendance at the event, Barbnaby is worried about looking cool and thinks that performing the theme from Ghostbusters (‘there’s something weird in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call’) is not going to do it.

Jamie and I spend the day in an office in Matsudai putting up website and blog. It’s a communal office for the volunteers and artists working on the Triennale. It is an abject lesson in what happens to a space if no one gives a fuck. Remarkably few people come in during the day, in fact only 3 - each of them making what sound to be diabolical projects. I am getting into this, each successive project is worse than its predecessor, so in the order they arrived:

1. A bright orange string laid on the ground round the whole Tsumari area. Each day the artist will drive out to where she has got to and continue laying the string, the project will take 3 months of time well spent.
2. A 5 metre high metal window frame with curtains. I think this idea has been done so many times there could be a great coffee table book of all the versions. Old Grizedale has 3, Forest of Dean a couple, there’s at least one at Hebden Bridge - although this one is a picture frame, but I think maybe the book could have a part 2 for the picture frame variation, and a sub section for the view point bastard child – the portholes, Claude glasses, binoculars, giant car mirrors and other related - look through big version stuff.
3. Placing Merino wool on a rice drying frame to raise awareness of the amount of Australian wool imported into Japan (Australian artist). Local people and volunteers have been working on this for months presumably because they are passionate about getting this criminally hidden history to public attention.

I am also starting to feel a bit guilty about dropping the artists into this heap of shit, but I really did nt know it would be this bad (I did know it would be bad though). Now I am starting to get scared and I am thinking about running for it.

Comments

[The ghost of Henry Cooper]

"IT'S A COMPUTER! DO YOU HAVE THESE IN YOUR COUNTRY??!"

(He looks a bit like John Lennon, doesn't he mum?)

[adam Sutherland]

actually there is only one computer in the village, and no internet connection. The magic of the computer does not register with people at all, they are not amazed and they dont really know what's going on. There is only one child living in the village and one teenager, it makes for quite an odd environment