Based on the current advertising campaign from the New Zealand Police it would seem graffiti is okay as long as they do it.
There are a series of images of police at work, interacting with people. I’ve seen the images used on bus shelters and even painted directly onto external walls of buildings.
There’s no mistake, the image is a stencilled image. It isn’t a photo. Would this not be graffiti?
I couldn’t help but think how much the image reminded me of another more famous image. As much as Bansky is admired he is also hated by local authorities who often can’t wait to paint over the images. They consider it graffiti, vandalism, defacing the neighbourhood. The fact that many payhuge sums of money for a Bansky original doesn’t seem to matter.
The origins of the NZ police image above are noble. The work was part of a series created by artist Otis Frizzell for a police recruitment initiative, which aimed to acknowledge the work undertaken by emergency responders in the aftermath of the earthquake in Christchurch in February. In a great sense of irony a copy of the artwork was unveiled in Christchurch and then later vandalised, graffitied over. You can read about the other images and the stories behind them.
Really, I have no problem with the campaign. I like stencil art and frequently photograph it. I notice there is some painted on the walls of a building near the left bank off Cuba Mall in Wellington. The problem with this is that in the name of the fucking rugby world cup and all the extra tourists who will be flocking to Cuba Mall, the whole area has been cleaned up by the over zealous council. They are concerned that visitors here for that stupid game don’t feel threatened in our city. In the process they are destroying the flavour of the place. And yet it is okay to paint up a similar image as long as it is a Police advertisement.
I managed to consume the second of the three new Torchwood novels in a couple of days. I know I’ve said it before but they really are like the reading equivalent of candy floss.
This novel really irritated me. Firstly they brought back a long dead character – yes, I know, this IS Torchwood but it was a character I just can’t like. I did like her at one point and just as I got to like her they killed her off before the show had barely started. I couldn’t believe they were in all likelihood about to do it again. This book just felt like such a filler as we all wait around for the new series to amount to something – though I have my doubts it will.
The whole “cleaning up the hub and now we’ve found something” seemed a bit predictable, a bit obvious. In fact the digging around in the debris is a little surprising perhaps – the contents are so toxic I’m surprised they didn’t just fill it with concrete, ah but then it isn’t real is it.
Like every Torchwood book it is around 250 pages – at least they all sit nice and evenly on the shelf I suppose. The thing is, it is divided up into a silly number of chapters and filled with blank pages between them as well. The book is seriously padded which suggested they were already stringing the story out as it was.
I’m grumpy. I miss Ianto. I miss Toshiko. I miss Jack. Flashbacks are just a little bit irritating and unsatisfying. If they were going to bring anyone back from the dead in a story, could it not have been Ianto?
I’m a fan of public transport and I use it every day. I was quite excited when Metlink finally started to roll out the real time information (RTI). I’m still yet to see any displays on any of the bus stops I use but I do use the RTI feature of their site. I’m also very pleased they’ve finally made it easy to change stops. I know I should be praising the efforts being made but I’m just irritated. There’s no iPhone app for RTI yet it seems the simplest thing. The metlink site is down more often than up during commuting times so just when I get to rely on it the site can’t cope. This week they resorted to using a google doc advertised via twitter to get information on route changes out. While part of me admires their business continuance the rest of me thinks they should get some help with their website.
I have other issues with RTI and what it is doing to the drivers. WIthe the speed reduction in the CBD it is hard to make up time when they get behind. The fact that they are running late is made even more obvious by the RTI but the drivers have a few tricks out in the suburbs:
don’t pull in to the curb, just stop in the middle of the road, that will save you time having to wait for a gap in the traffic, you can just hold it all up instead,
don’t kneel the bus – apparently that takes time to and is a bit of a hassle. If that little old lady can’t make the leap, leave her for the next bus,
don’t stop, don’t even look at the bus stop, just pretend it doesn’t exist,
don’t wait for the passengers to be seated. I’m sure drivers get bonus points for scattering passengers and their belongings down the aisle of the bus,
don’t wait for anyone who isn’t standing within 2cm of the bus stop sign, especially ignore them 1 metre from the sign if they have their arm out and are looking you in the eye,
and as the passenger is getting off the bus, close the door, they should move faster and closing the door will give them the extra push they need.
There is the odd exceptionally lovely driver out there but they are so rare, their loveliness is drowned out by the antics of the rest of the grumpy bastards. There are some drivers I recognise now, and when I see them in the driver’s seat I wait and catch the next bus.
My favourite incident in recent days was the driver who spent ages shouting at a woman and her child. It took me ages to figure out what he was on about as he just kept shouting seemingly random words. Once I looked up I realised the woman was of chinese descent. Her child was holding a lidded cup and the driver wanted the mother to hold the cup but shouting “Milkshake, you hold” over and over was stupid. “Could you hold the child’s cup” might have been a better idea. I heard the woman speaking perfect English to her friend but the driver’s racist assumptions lead to a complete communication breakdown.
I used to think that for the most part Newlands Buses had fairly good customer service and that the worst came from the Stagecoach bus drivers but in the last 3-4 months both companies have been outdoing each other in the crap driver competition. I did try submitting info on a couple of incidents through the form on Newlands’ site but it crashes on submit. Metlink are very good at taking feedback on Go Wellington’s behalf through Twitter but really, Go Wellington need to stop hiding behind that.
Tiny Furniture was alas my final film of the festival. It will be hard returning to working full weeks after skipping days left right and centre as I fed my inner film demon. As I watched this movie I though, even at 22 children can still be self-centred spoilt brats. And then I wondered at what age they grow out of that. When you have the option of moving back into Mum’s New York apartment after you finish university then I guess you can delay taking responsibility and growing up. I enjoyed this movie, every character with its own little circle of dysfunctional self-centered attention-seeking behaviour. And mostly, I just wanted to play with the dolls’ house furniture.
Photo Credit: Jodi Bieber, South Africa, Institute for Artist Management/Goodman Gallery for Time magazine.
Last year I managed to miss the exhibition all together so this year I was determined to get in early. In hindsight, going on the first day probably wasn’t the wisest.
There are some amazing and haunting photos, you have to see it for yourself. But if you can take time off work to go during the day then do so. It was packed and people were generally poorly behaved acting as though they had greater rights than everyone else. There’s really no need for pushing and shoving.
The organisers – there are a few things they could do to improve the situation – like stop letting people in, if the place is packed then just say no. The exhibition starts right at the top of the stairs so there’s a complete bottle neck getting into the place. The descriptions of each photo are far too small, they are catalogue size not exhibition wall size. Also they’re placed at the far right of the work so there’s a lot of people moving backwards and forwards in front of each photo.
I don’t think this is a place for small children – many of these images are brutal and disturbing. I watched a mother trying to explain photos to her small girls as with every one they couldn’t make sense of it on their own. “Mummy, what’s that?” was uttered in font of almost every photo. How do you explain a series of photos showing backroom abortions? Or large piles of naked bodies awaiting cremation after a natural disaster? I listened to her explain the photo above. “In some countries, women must obey men. This girl didn’t obey her husband and he punished her by chopping off her nose. She has had surgery now so they will have given her a new nose.” Okay, I though, fair enough summary but I sure hope at some stage soon that mother is also going to explain that that isn’t okay.
About a week ago I was super excited to come home to the new Torchwood novel in my mailbox. I was mid reading some other trash so didn’t get to it till mid-week. A couple of days later I’d not only finished it but the next book had arrived in the post. These Torchwood novels are like a drug for me. I know there’s little literary merit in them, that they’ll always mysteriously be exactly the same number of pages and that the good guys will win.
This latest batch of books precede the Miracle Day fourth series of Torchwood which has just started screening in the UK and USA. Bit by bit they answer some of the questions which you can sort of figure out from the latest TV series anyway – like just what has Gwen Cooper being doing in the meantime.
First Born was a bit slow to get started. I wasn’t enthralled from the start, in fact I wondered if it was going to annoy me as much as the TV series is at the moment. Fact is I miss Ianto and Toshiko and Jack. I can live without Owen. Having Gwen and Rhys occupying most of the story with their baby girl is well, a little tedious. Even the alien life forms are non-threatening and odd but essentially boring for most of the story. If you’re a Woodie you’ll no doubt read this book anyway. I can’t imagine non-fans picking it up though. It isn’t something I recommend to anyone who wasn’t already obsessed with Torchwood.
I pre-ordered my copies on Book Depository and thankfully they were released in the UK first starting at the end of July. They’re not released in the USA till end of August, early September. If you try to buy it locally, say through Mighty Ape then you’ll be waiting till 2 September. Is it any wonder people buy online and overseas.
I like to see a German film each festival. In a small way it gives me an opportunity to see how much of the language I can remember. They are often quirky films and this was no exception. An airline steward has a bit of a mid-life crisis and walks out of her life into one inhabited by student activists out to save everything small and furry. It was equal parts weird and entertaining.
Before it started it was announced that the director would answer questions after the screening. There was nothing short of s stampede for the exit as the closing credits started to roll. The theatre wasn’t overly full to start with but it was a 2pm screening. I counted, by the time we got to the end there were only 13 of us left. There’d been some quick conversations going on behind me during the credits and sure enough it was then announced that there’d been a mistake and the director wasn’t available after all. It was a bit embarrassing and maybe it was for the best. I didn’t have any questions but would have been happy to listen to others. If the other 12 folk were the same it could have been an awkward session.
My third to last movie of this year’s festival was Cave of forgotten dreams. It was at Te Papa’s Soundings Theatre which I mostly find irritating. I don’t want an ice cream at every movie but it is annoying you’re not even supposed to take bottled water in. There’s another downside as we discovered – no cell phone coverage. Normally you’d think that’d be a good thing – it isn’t if someone collapses during the film.
Half way into the film there was a commotion at the other end of my row. Someone had collapsed. On of her friends ran out of the theatre. There were calls for the lights to be turned on, the movie stopped, but it continued on for 5 mins. Eventually the message got through to the staff and the lights came on. A few minutes later someone finally told everyone what was happening – a patron wasn’t very well and we were waiting for an ambulance. It eventually arrived, the ill person evacuated and the movie was restarted after a 10-15 minute break.
So, the movie, I think it could be summed up as crazy French people with pretentious commentary and wanky atmospheric music. It had some annoying camera work near the beginning that actually made you feel like you may very well fall off the side of the mountain despite being seated in a cinema. I also couldn’t help but be amazed at the amount of human intrusion into a space which was supposed to be so protected – could there be anymore walkways? I wasn’t convinced that this cave is really as protected and revered as they say. I enjoyed this look at Chauvet – face it, the chances of seeing it in real live are zero.
Another afternoon movie today. It was at the Embassy which is usually a pleasant experience. Today was a little annoying. Their lift wasn’t working which didn’t help my injured knee. I decided to treat myself to a hokey pokey ice cream but got served by Mr Incompetent who forgot to go get my ice cream and asked why I was still standing in front of him. Of course by then they’d sold the last ice cream. I said I’ll take my money back. He went through several options, each time I repeated, no I just want my money back. Honestly it was starting to feel like I wasn’t going to get it. Then he goes and gets a supervisor. Honestly, seriously? You were so damn quick to take my money, you can’t stump up with the goods and now you won’t give it back. Then guess what, the supervisor starts with the same alternate offers. I firmly said “NO I JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK”. He told me not to take that tone. I pointed out that this was about the sixth time I’d had to ask. I was good-natured about Mr Incompetent’s original fuck up but the eight minutes it took Mr Snarky to give my $4 back was just stupid.
Anyway, rant over.
The movie I saw was The Trip featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. The pair are like an old married couple as they bicker and out-act each other over fine dining and driving through the back roads of “the North”. I particularly enjoyed the Abba duets. There were so many hilarious lines in the movie, I wish I could remember them.
Alas if the whole “we’ve run out of ice cream but are going to make it difficult to get your money back” debacle wasn’t enough to distract me before the movie, I then had a very smelly woman sit beside me in the theatre. She and her breath stank. It was bad enough I got the stick perfume out of my bag and applied that to try to mask the odour beside me. Here’s hoping tomorrow’s movie experience is better.
Supinfocom is an animation school and this is a collection of work from the graduates of a five year couse. The shortest animation is 3 minutes, the longest is 8. Brilliant though these are you can’t help but feel the proportion of time spent on credits is way out of kilter to the actual content.
I managed to consume the second of the three new Torchwood novels in a couple of days. I know I’ve said it before but they really are like the reading equivalent of candy floss.
