Spectacle // Current TV

LOCOG facing legal action over re-sale of hotel packages

The London Olympics Committee off the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is facing... more

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10 months ago
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Battersea Power Station: an open letter to the Science Museum

Keith Garner is a Battersea-based architect and member of the Battersea Power Station... more

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10 months ago
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LOCOG to ban cameras from the Olympics

Amateur Photographer has reported that the London Organising Committee for the Olympic... more

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10 months ago
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Chimneys standing firm

REO continue to shoot themselves in the – what by now must be, given their perilously brittle financial circumstances, bare – feet. Their persistent corporate prostitution of the inner sanctuary of the Battersea Power Station (for yous philistines who don’t know is now renamed THE BOILER ROOM) rips away any last layer of credibility from the assertion that the iconic chimneys of Battersea Power Station should be demolished for safety reasons.

http://www.spectacle.co.uk/spectacleblog/battersea-power-station/chimneys-standing-firm/

This declaration is a major part of REO’s planning application, stating that the chimneys are monstrously dangerous actually, given that they could fall down imminently. This is the reason, according to Planning Director of REO and Treasury Holdings Jeremy Castle, that there is a strict thirty metre exclusion zone around each of the chimneys at each event. Quite how they maintain this INSIDE the structure of the power station is a mystery.

What undermines these claims is that there have been a slew of conferences, dinners and even large scale events in and around the power station throughout the year; from the recent Red Bull X-Fighter Motorcross event to the upcoming SHINE benefit dinner in November (where a canopy and walkway to access The Boiler Room will be constructed for guests). These events, inclusive of the Paul McCartney gig inside the station back in July, would not be permitted to take place if there was any truth to these safety concerns, so this fallacy of collapsing chimneys is but a clever marketing shoehorn to strengthen the application process. Which ironically of course, will be slowed down to increase the value of the land if the application is accepted.

This flagrant contradiction only adds to the controversy surrounding REO, given that they are over a billion in debt, unable to pay interest to creditors, heavily criticised by heritage institutions such as the Victorian Society, Kew Bridge Engine Trust and the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, and planning an unwanted underground line extension. The current plans for the station, which you can read more about on our Spectacle Battersea Blog, also include planning requests for an office and leisure complex, riverside access, a hotel, and 3,700 luxury flats.

To send in a written objection to the plans to demolish the station and its neighbouring Grade II* listed sister pumping house, address it to Bob Leuty at Wandsworth Council, planning applications@wandsworth.gov.uk . The deadline for written objections is 5pm tomorrow (30th September), and you can also contact your Wandsworth Councillor and ask them what their view is on this before deciding how to vote.REO continue to shoot themselves in the – what by now must be, given their... more

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1 year ago
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Basildon is latest signing to Disgruntled First XI

Residents of Basildon are beginning a petition against yet more prospective public land sales to private developers in the wake of the agreed Sporting Village project. The public-private partnership between the council and construction company Morgan Sindall is part of the ‘Olympic Games’ Legacy’, and has already claimed a substantial piece of Gloucester Park, the town’s gymnastics club and Markham’s Chase Leisure Centre.

http://www.spectacle.co.uk/spectacleblog/olympics-2012/basildon-is-latest-signing-to-disgruntled-first-xi/

However, despite funding from sizeable organisations such as Sport England, there is an outstanding £19 million of the £38 million projected cost still to be paid, which means that other public areas have now been targeted by the council as expendable, notably including the Pound Lane Recreation Ground which is used by local clubs and youngsters.

With the land in the hands of private developers, it will not only be used for the promised top-grade sporting facilities, as planning permission has already been sought for 73 homes on the former Markham Chase Leisure Centre site, and also 25 new houses on Northlands Park playing fields. This story is becoming a familiar sub-plot in the narrative of London 2012, with Hackney Marshes and Drapers Field in Waltham Forest also conspicuous casualties of the Olympic legacy.

Although the actions appear reactionary in frantically (and apparently reluctantly) trying to raise money for the benefit of the local area, the significant gap in funding suggests the opposite; that these areas of public use have been previously marked out for redevelopment at the expense of affordable – and often free – opportunities for local residents to play sport with the ultimate product being private gain. Many residents are also anxious that the planned facilities will be too expensive for them to use, and will only be exploited by elite sportsmen and women.

500 signatures have so far been garnered by those organising the petition, underlining the top-down approach to so-called public land.Residents of Basildon are beginning a petition against yet more prospective public... more

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1 year ago
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Silwood Residents’ “Frequently” Asked Questions…

Prior to having their gardens dug up and the topsoil replaced, residents of Silwood... more

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1 year ago
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UK government tried to prevent disclosure of detention manual

The government’s attempts to delay the current proceedings that have yielded... more

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1 year ago
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Measured antipathy and treachery by British Intelligence

An official report of an interview with Omar Deghayes confirmed his testimony, that... more

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1 year ago
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No-one’s really bothered, keep going

“Public opinion has on the whole shown little concern about the welfare of the... more

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1 year ago
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Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

Documentary telling the story of Guantánamo: torture, extraordinary rendition... more

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1 year ago
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Guardian: Classified documents reveal UK's role in abuse of its own citizens

"MI5 officers interviewed Omar Deghayes in Afghanistan Kabul for three hours on... more

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1 year ago
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Emotion, Spectacle And Songs Writ Large

Peter Gabriel has never shied away from grandeur or paused at the threshold of... more

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1 year ago
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Yes Men hoax the US Chamber of Commerce

On the way to work I heard that the US Chamber of Commerce, have decided to end their... more

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2 years ago
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Social satire and the fight for healthcare reform

Last week we talked about Billionaires for Wealthcare. I received this transmission from their organization:
The latest incarnation of the "Billionaire" meme, "Billionaires for
Wealthcare" struck again this weekend, as Healthcare Inc. CEOs in tuxedos and gowns "thanked" Tea-baggers for coming out for Glenn Beck's March on Washington this past Saturday.

Tea-baggers eagerly joined in on Billionaire chants of "Bring Back Bush!" and “Fight Socialism! Abolish Medicare Now!”, but the greatest crowd pleaser (and provoker) of the day, was a stirring rendition of their original song "Let's Save the Status Quo" sung to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and memorably captured in this music video. We were recently featured by Rachel Maddow.

Watch as we thank our confused Tea-bagger friends for protecting 'our' right to deny their claims.
The Billionaires use Voltairian satire at protests to show that some of the only beneficiaries of the current health care system, are the executives.

The Billionaires have been at work for over a decade, relishing in photo ops and editorials, hoping that their spectacle gets picked up by third-party news agencies.

Today Funny or Die and MoveOn released this satirical PSA
[funnyordie 041b5acaf5]

It shares the same message as the work of the Billionaires. But their approach is a different theatre on the war for universal health care. Will Ferrell and company are using their fame and viral reach to push this message out to millions of people.

Using satirical internet video for massive social change is something that only became a reality in the past few years. Faster computers, ubiquity of web content, and mainstream attention to internet phenomena, are all factors that make this a viable approach to enacting change.

Funny or Die celebrity exclusives always become viral. MoveOn's newsletter reaches 3.3 million people. Together they might have the potential to provide a counter argument to Glenn Beck's legion of Tea-Baggers.

Celebrities will get this idea out, but we should never forget that the Billionaires are on the front-line in this satirical strategy for social change.Last week we talked about Billionaires for Wealthcare. I received this transmission... more

joshuaheller
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2 years ago
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Raw Materials for a Theory of the YoungGirl

A full translation of Tiqqun's "Raw Materials for a Theory of the... more

unnamed
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2 years ago
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sensual spectacle of dance

two dancers, sensual spectacle of dance

albumihai
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2 years ago
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Chris Hedges: The Empire of Illusion

How did such a sizeable portion of modern society develop into a post-literate,... more

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2 years ago
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The Joy of Not Getting It

"Art that bewilders one generation becomes accessible to the next; or so it would seem. Widely reviled on its first appearance in 1955, Beckett's Waiting For Godot now packs out the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, which is usually associated with dressy revivals of Wilde and Coward. Pinter's No Man's Land, once regarded as unfathomable, recently had a profitable West End run. Picasso and Rothko are established gallery favourites. And, although Britten's Peter Grimes is now seen as England's national opera, in 1945 it was viewed by many as a "difficult" piece. So how does one explain the transformation in popular taste?

Partly, it's a natural process: the true artist is always ahead of the game and the public takes time to catch up. Beckett in Godot saw life as a matter of stoical endurance in the face of ultimate meaninglessness: not such a far-fetched concept in our own post-Christian, post-ideological age. Above all, Beckett discovered drama could be fashioned not out of external events but out of the process of waiting itself: an idea capitalised on by a host of later writers including Stoppard, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and Mamet in American Buffalo. Pinter's vision of private life as a political power battle in which memories, whether true or false, are a vital tactical weapon, is also one that most of us would now recognise.

But there is more to it than the depth-charge effect of great drama. Along with the erosion of the old certainties and the belief that life is explicable in religious or philosophical terms has gone a total revolution in the form of drama. Plays used to follow an Aristotelian pattern: exposition, crisis, denouement. Now "theatre" is an all-embracing term that includes street spectacles and art installations, and drama can take whatever form the artist chooses. It can be an elliptical fragment like Caryl Churchill's This Is A Chair or a visual epic like Nick Stafford's War Horse. It can be a conversation piece like Wallace Shawn's The Designated Mourner or a publicly performed essay such as David Hare's Via Dolorosa.

The real sea-change in audiences, however, is that they actively seem to welcome drama that is "open" rather than "closed": work, in other words, that avoids an easy resolution. You could argue this is not wholly new: Ibsen's A Doll's House leaves us free to speculate on Nora's future, just as Chekhov's Three Sisters does not exactly settle its heroines' fate. But, outside the world of genre fiction and movies, today's readers and audiences crave freedom of choice: of being able to make up their own minds about the characters' destiny or the work's ultimate significance. Part of the pleasure of a Pinter play, as the critic Alastair Macaulay once shrewdly wrote, is of not fully understanding it: you only had to listen to the animated conversations on the way out of No Man's Land to grasp how much audiences relished the prospect of working it out for themselves.""Art that bewilders one generation becomes accessible to the next; or so it would... more

St_Alia_10191
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2 years ago
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The Difference Between Boring and Dull

"There is very little that playwrights, film directors, fiction editors and... more

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2 years ago
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