The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Went into town today and someone has put a load of Israeli flags on a number of lampposts along the seafront. We recently had a similar thing with St George's flags a few weeks ago (which have since been taken down by the council).

While I disagree with most of the actions of Israel in the current conflict, I get that the events at the music festival 2 years ago were horrendous and people should be allowed to commemorate them if they need to. However, even if the flags are simply intended as a symbol of solidarity, they still seem a little provocative given how precarious the situation is there at the moment, so I'm sure there must be some other way of doing it.

It feels as if flags are becoming more and more meaningful in a very uncomfortable way, and most of that meaning seems to be down to arbitary boundaries that someone has decided to draw on a map (and often not the people that are affected by where the line is). I know that some people would argue it's also to do with culture, but I'm a little unconvinced by that argument as culture seems to be much less rigidly bound by borders and often connected to less formal geographic locations.

Having come back to this blog after some time, I was looking back through my icons and was reminded of this one. It's a photo of Oxymoron by Mark Wallinger, a flag he created when tensions were running high in Northern Ireland combining elements of both the UK and Irish flags. I saw it flying on the South Bank near the Royal Festival Hall some time around 15-20 years ago (guess if I looked back through the posts here, I'd probably find out exactly when it was). I love how thought provoking it is on the whole concept of national identity.

Not going to go out and tie copies of it to lampposts, but somehow think it would help if more people would question these things.

Iran 'would like nuclear option'

Erm... yes, of course they would!

OK, so Iran doesn't exactly strike me as utopia and it seems generally agreed that nuclear weapons are kind of scarey whoever has them ...except if it's us and our mates when for some reason it suddenly becomes ok *confused look*

However, it does seem odd how surprised we always seem to be when the topic gets raised that all these other places might actually want them too.

OK, so from our position as big bullies of the world playground we may be able to turn around to all the littler countries and steal their dinner money to prevent them reaching us, but every now and then one of them will grow up and gain access to these things, at which point we suddenly declare them our mate and life carries on. We would never dream of giving up our power over the world though, why on earth would they want the same power as us?

Next thing you know we'll be finding one of these countries we don't like the look of invading them on fairly tenuous evidence and enforcing regime change to make them more like us... Oh, yes, hang on a minute, I remember now, we've already done that one

One day we may stop being hipocritical and actually get rid of our nuclear weapons like ElBaradei suggests. Who knows, maybe we'll even replace them with missiles made out of bacon.

In the meantime who's turn is it to polish the nuclear superpowers halo?

Yesterday, I wandered over to the Whitechapel Gallery, as I was curious to see the tapestry of the Picasso's Guernica.



The tapestry was produced as a collaboration between Picasso and weaver Jacqueline de la Baume Durrbach under commission from Nelson Rockefeller in 1955 and has been on display at the UN Headquarters in New York since the mid-1980s. The tapestry is being showcased here while the UN headquarters are being renovated, as part of the Whitechapel Gallery's reopening (the original painting had been displayed here in 1938.

Around the tapestry is an exhibition of the work of Goshka Macuga, including a bust of Colin Powel in Picasso style, a reference to the fact that the tapestry was covered over during Powell's address to the UN arguing for the war on Iraq. The exhibition will be on display until 18 April 2010.

Most of the rest of the gallery is displaying works by Isa Genzken, some of which are quite bizarre, but very clever. I was particularly impressed by the concrete radios and how much meaning the mind can take from shape. It's interesting that a cuboid of concrete with an aerial sticking out was clearly a radio and a block with a few holes drilled through was clearly a loudspeaker. Genzken's work will be on display here until 21 June.

However, Minerva Cuevas's exhibition has to be the best as it involves ice-cream. Her work looks at co-operative and although there is only a small amount of it in the gallery itself, it spreads out into the nearby Petticoat Lane Market, where she has introduced a new currency. The S.COOP coins are being circulated in exchange for purchases on the market.

The galleries space on Toynbee Street has been turned into a ice cream parlour "Monochrome" as part of this, serving a selection of ice-cream flavours, but they are all white. Unfortunately, the exhibition finishes today, but the coins will be in circulation around the market until 7 June and if you happen to be anywhere near Toynbee street this afternoon, apparently they will be giving away free ice-cream.