Pompeii comes to London: a shocking lesson at TBM--By Lulu

Last Friday, I visited a blockbuster exhibition “Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum” currently features at The British Museum. This exhibition is quite unique, which captures the true horror of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, meanwhile also offers visitors a full and lively picture about the Roman towns.  Overall, fascinating, shocking and horrifying are all accurate descriptions of this exhibition as you travel to the heart of their remarkable time in history.

At the beginning of the exhibition, isolated from the main exhibition, there were three objects. The first is a plaster cast of a dog. Its collar simply told us that his was probably a guard dog abandoned by its owner when Pompeii was buried in volcanic ash. The second and third objects are both from Herculaneum: a wooden table turned into charcoal and a fragment pieces of fresco.

In terms of the main exhibitions, starting with the bustling street, and moving through the intimate spaces of a home, you will be transported into the lives of wealthy Roman nearly 2,000 years, before devastation struck. From the atrium to the garden, bedroom

 and dining room, I spent almost 1 hour around the section of bedroom. The main theme of the bedroom is called love and lust. The villas of the wealthy were frequently decorated with erotic scenes conveying auspicious messages of fertility and wealth. I attached an example displayed in the exhibition of bedroom. A couple are shown making love on a bed covered with luxurious bedding and cushions. The maid seems free to wander around her owner’s bedroom. On one hand, it clearly demonstrates the open and straightforward approach Romans had toward sex. On the other hand, it fully indicated during that period, there was no distinctive class system.  


Notably, apart from the position of slaves, women in Pompeii and Herculaneum, while they had no political rights, but they could own businesses, possess personal wealth and land and have an education.

At the end of the exhibition you are confronted, finally with death. I was totally shocked by the sight of a family: parents and two children-, who died together, huddled in an alcove under the stairs of a house. One child is on the mother’s lap. Mother and father appear to be falling backwards, reeling from the blast of tremendous heat that destroyed them. A child on the right hand side posited as ‘boxer’ pose, tried to fight with the searing heat.

Overall, it is a sombre way to finish the whole exhibition, as I leave and enter into a more peaceful environment- gift shop.

Reducing everything to patterns

Hey everyone, it's Alexia. As i'm sure you've surmised from the other interns, we were asked to wander around Brick Lane and share our thoughts. Since I've moved to London I've rarely spent any time in that area so I most curious to explore this 'super creative hub' everyone's mentioned.

To be honest, immediately upon arrival my poor minimalist sensibilities were a bit overhwelmed! There was just layers upon layers upon layers of colour nearly everywhere you looked and it seemed as if every bit of creativity was in competition with one another. And the more I looked, the more things started to seem the same.

So! I took a step back and embraced the sameness, focusing on discerning patterns- and not only was that way more interesting, I began to notice individual touches reocurring throughout the street. It became like a scavenger hunt.  These are some of my findings.

Tesselations

Large Eye Fixations

The Same Hand At Work

Portraits

This might not come as a surprise, but my favourite parts were the quietest ones, tucked away and hidden in plain sight.

"99% of people will not notice this" / "76% of Statistics are made up on the spot"

Special tour in Bricklane- Yue

Last week, all of the interns at CIDA got a new task, that is, to explore the area around Brick lane. I have only been to Brick lane once to try its Asian food market, and it was really nice. However, this time the purpose is totally different. As two of us were ill yesterday, we decided to keep this trip relax and simple.

Our short visit started here.

I did a little research about Brick lane because I did not know about it well. All I know is that it is considered as the centre of creative industries in eastern London, but I do not know the reason. According to Wikipedia, Brick Lane is a street in East London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It runs from Swanfield Street in the northern part of Bethnal Green, crosses Bethnal Green Road, passes through Spitalfields and is linked to Whitechapel High Street to the south by the short stretch of Osborn Street. Today, it is the heart of the city's Bangladeshi-Sylheti community and is known to some as Banglatown. It is famous for its many curry houses. In addition, Mavrommatis(2006) points out that this area used to be famous for high unemployed and unskilled workforce rate. However, as a result of the founding of  'Creative Industries Task Force' and the internet revolution,

creative labours such as web designers, computer engineers, art directors, music producers etc. began to gathered around in this area. According to Mavrommatis,

in Brick Lane, a local redeveloped brewery building provided the space for these new forms of entrepreneurial creativity to blossom. Through the passage of time, a variety of cafes, bars, exhibition spaces, etc. conglomerated around the Brewery. These new ‘creative’ cultures inscribed their lifestyle patterns onto the surrounding urban vernacular. Within a few years, Brick Lane’s vernacular landscape transformed through the insertion of a ‘creative community’ and its ways of life. These new lifestyles settled side-by-side with ‘native’ ethnic populations, bodies, languages, cultures, etc. In short, a new ‘creative’ Brick Lane was born based on entrepreneurial creativity and the spread of new digital technologies.

However, during this short visit we were not able to gain the full picture of  how this area acted as the creative centre though there were a several art centre and galleries around it, illustrating the artistic atmosphere in this area. The most impressive thing about Brick lane is the street art. They are almost every where. Luckily, we even met some artists who were just painting graffiti on the wall. I walk to office everyday, and compared to Liverpool Street which I have passed by several times, Brick lane gives a more vibrant and creative feeling to me. Perhaps that is one of the demonstrations of the life style of creative workers.

 

 

 

During this trip, I found one CD store 'Rough Trade East' which I thought was quite vintage and creative. The founders opened this store in 2007 against a towering tide of scepticism and doubt. Today, it's rated one of London's major retail destinations, winner of numerous awards, a law unto itself. Their aim is to unite inspiring people with listeners. Visitors can listen to the music on their machine in store and trying to find their favourite independent music. This store provided new means for music artists to approach listeners, which I find quite meaningful. Because nowadays, digital music industry such as iTunes has influenced the market of traditional music industry, and the stereotyping of music consumption has made independent music less known to ordinary people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brick Lane Tour

Hey there guys, I’ve just been out of office for a weekend, why do I miss you so much and think it’s been such a long time?! Aha I must like working at CIDA very much. As we all know, CIDA is based in the heart of the East End, south of the Olympic Village, just east of the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ and a stone’s throw from Brick Lane. Last Thursday, Toks and Rebecca gave me and other girls the chance to explore the Brick Lane on our own.

I have my own purpose of this tour. As I told you guys before, I am interested in stories behind each passenger in London and want to listen to their story and share mine with them. Brick Lane gives me the chance because it is all those unique, special and stylish vintage stores that make Brick Lane famous for.  I like second hand garments and accessories, but I didn’t usually buy them. On the one hand, I usually get some high-quality stuff from my mother and grandmother because they are gorgeous ladies, who have great taste. On the other hand, I think it is because of culture or mysophobia (I’m not that serious and morbid of course). I don’t know where they are from, their last owner and what stories they have been through.

But things have changed. I’ve never noticed that I like vintage stores so much until I came to London. The first reason must be their artistic decoration. Everyone has his/her heart in beautiful things. Where else can you buy superior quality in such a reasonable price? But just for your information, check thoroughly before you pay, especially for details. Most stores have no return, refund and exchange policy, so bewareJ

Second, wearing vintage garments means keeping up with the times. Sorry? You say it is too old, you may be totally wrong. You’ll get a new idea on vintage after having a look at who likes to wear them: JuliaRoberts, Renee Zellweger, Chloe Sevigny, Tatiana Sorokko, Kate Moss and so on. This increase in interest is due in part to increased visibility, as vintage clothing was increasingly worn by top models and celebrities. Besides, popularity of period pieces set in the mid 20th century in television and film has also contributed to vintage's popularity.

Finally, vintage shops imply clusters of all creative ideas, so does the graffiti outside. It shows the best combination of inside and outside, making them much more attractive and a better place for visiting.

 


Cheers, 

Mo

Howdy!

Hello everyone! My name is Alexia and i’m a new intern here at CIDA. I’m getting my MA in Creative Cities as King’s – a programme that combines not just courses on the Creative and Cultural Industries but also cultural policy, geography, and urban development. I came here from America after studying glassmaking and photography to learn how to provide more creative opportunities to excluded and marginalised people and have always wanted to bring more installation and experience-based art into smaller cities and rural areas.

I’m so happy to be interning for CIDA because their organisation essentially encompasses my reason for coming to England. As an artist, much of my work also seeks to do the same. Through art and creativity, I want to help others overcome the difficulties of imagining other people and allow my audience to experience thought outside of themselves. Personally, I think that art isn’t just about aesthetics or objects- it’s about experiences and communicating as society in a new way. And I want more let more people have their voices heard. 

The weekend before I started this internship I was fortunate enough to visit the Venice Biennale and was thoroughly overwhelmed and inspired. For those of you that don’t know, many countries at the Biennale have their own pavilions to showcase the best art being produced from their nation- perhaps it’s easier to think about as the art Olympics? Anyway, what I saw at the Japanese pavilion I will never forget. It was almost meta- in a way; it did everything I want to do while examining art and what it can do in the bigger narrative of ‘how can art realistically bring people together?’ ‘How can it contribute after the tsunami?’

The exhibiting artist, KokiTanaka, responded to these questions by examining collaboration, shared experiences in microcommunities, creation and problem solving. His work was so simple and moving: all he did was ask people to come together to do something together, make something together, or experience something together. The art itself was the event, and the videos playing all around the pavilion were artefacts. 

[from Koki Tanaka's piece at the Biennale x]

For example, he had nine different people collaborate on the haircut of one woman, each taking their turn on her hair and getting everyone’s opinion. Similarly, a group of people went on an urban expedition with flashlights, another group collaborated on pottery, on poetry, on a piano piece. A group of people took a nap together with all of their heads facing eachother to try to dream collectively, and then constructed the narrative of a story when they woke up together. I thought the most poetic was when each person brought their favourite tea and put it all in one teapot and drank from it, sharing and uniting bits of the world in a single, communal act.

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You can learn more about the project here