Jonathan Meades new programme was on tonight it was excellent as usual. It was about regeneration and was the best and most entertaining thing I've seen about this subject. He coined a good phrase to describe buildings like the guggenheim in bilbao as a "sightbite" a visual snapshot that encapulates a whole city, a visual sound bite. I mean what sort of art hangs in the guggenheim most people don't know ( i don't) but i know about Bilboa thanks to the guggenheim's shape. This stream of babble captures the regeneration worlds' nonsense in a nutshell, remember it the next time the olympics is mentioned.
I also like the way he's not afraid of being clever and expects us to understand.It's not elitist quite the reverse expecting everyone to be thick is high handed and patronising. If occasionally you don't understand a bit, well it's not the end of the world, it's taken me 20 years to understand what a dialectic is. I still remember his telling phrase where he blames a lot of victorian gothic as a side effect of "tertiary sypillis"!
I also like the way he's not afraid of being clever and expects us to understand.It's not elitist quite the reverse expecting everyone to be thick is high handed and patronising. If occasionally you don't understand a bit, well it's not the end of the world, it's taken me 20 years to understand what a dialectic is. I still remember his telling phrase where he blames a lot of victorian gothic as a side effect of "tertiary sypillis"!
1 comment:
Makes me wish I'd got a telly still! Or a computer which was fast enough to run video clips. And had a sound card! Perhaps one day I should attempt to catch up with the 21st century.
By the way - what IS a dialectic? It's one of those words, like pedagogy, and hegemony, which it seems one is supposed to know, but don't.
Post a Comment