I went to the Tate Turbine Hall on behalf of the Guardian’s “Another View” column. They were thinking of getting a civil defence expert, but she’d have been even less impressed than me. Results out on Monday.
TH.2058 made me remember the old days, when we knew how to do you a real disaster, a disaster with bottom; so I was doubly saddened to hear that Barry Bayley died. He wrote pretty weird stuff & he was always good for a laugh.
Bayley and Ray Lowry in one week: the known world’s crumbling about us.
When we are now, in part, defined by our on-line presences I’m struck by the incongruence between Barry Bayley’s website and his sad passing. Are we ‘Friends Reuniteds’ (register once to see which of your classmates has bothered) or are we near-daily bloggers. How much do you exist in the web?
Hi Mike: interesting point. How much do you exist walking down the street ? I’m not sure there’s ever more than an intent to congruence between people’s selves and their self-presentation, on the web or in the mall. (That’s before we get into Metzinger et al.) And Barry Bayley came from a pre-semiotic–even anti-semiotic–generation. I can imagine just the kind of glee he might have felt at the disjunction between what he was & what he se(e)med to be. Writers know you can never successfully “express” yourself. That’s part of the terror of it. Or am I missing your point ? (I’m happy to accept I am.)
…no, not at all Mike: my point now has a locus (thanks) along which I shall tread gingerly, stepping into this Saturday’s uneasy, ‘dis-credited’ mall-life.