Boards of Canada

POLARCAP
NO MORE STARS
PRESENTS
AUGUST 2007
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www.polarcap.org.uk
ISBN no is 978-0-9556302-1-7 Polarcap Publications July 2007
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NO MORE STARS
Polarcap is pleased to present its second exhibition “No More Stars”. Taking it’s name from an anagram of “astronomers”,
the exhibition reflects on the words of the science-fiction writer Philip K Dick “Once you have opened your mind to the
notion of fake, then you are ready to think yourself into another universe entirely”. This questioning of “reality” is intrinsic
in the thinking processes of artists today in our media saturated world.
No More Stars is a joint venue exhibition held simultaneously at Edinburgh College of Art and West Barns Studios as part
of the 4th Edinburgh Art Festival and has been made possible by the generous support of East Lothian Council, Edinburgh
College of Art and in collaboration with Galerie Brigitte Weiss, Zurich.
Polarcap [Contemporary Arts Projects] is a new organisation based in West Barns Studios, Dunbar and is committed to
promoting the visual arts in East Lothian and beyond through its continuing programme of exhibitions and publications.
Graeme Todd, Liz Adamson.
Polarcao Ltd
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Neil Mulholland
Random Son of a Bitch
Uh, I feel in writing mood. What else can I say? I know.
No boss at the moment - what more could a typical run of
I usually get up at 6.15am in the morning because I
the mill bastard say was better? I think today is gonna be
always do. I try to make it to the 7:15am bus, and then I
spent tidying up. I find that even the simple act of clearing
take the 7:30am ferry. On the ferry I usually practice
off a bulletin board can make a room feel more open. You
talking with a friend. This is ‘morning chat’. We tend to
really don’t have to ask yourself why you bother. I plan to
talk about what we’ve done that morning so far. Today
work for about 3.7 hours. Let’s hope it’s a nice easy day!
I talk about getting up at 6:15am and ‘just’ making the
Now I am official - at least I hope so.
ferry we’re on (even although I easily made it). This takes
about eight minutes. Then at 7:38am I get on the bus on
At around 10:00am we have breakfast (for some people
the other side. The bus drives right to work.
it’s probably more lunch). We have scrambled eggs
bacon, all sorts of different toast, bagels. I always take a
When I don’t sit right at a window I am always lost and I
bagel. Then I put some margarine on it which everybody
have no idea when to get out. I need to invent some
thinks is odd because you are supposed to put cream
landmarks so I know when to get off. So far I never over
cheese on it. I eat one thing at a time. If I do more than
shoot, but I got off too early twice last week and the week
one activity at a time, I have to take too much time out
before that I got off once early, although it seemed as
attempting to identify which activity is primary. Eating one
though I’d got off three times early. I know I’ve only made
thing at a time means that my diet dooesn’t have to be
this trip for something like four years and three weeks, but
grouped into categories. Uh, I feel in the mood for one
to me it seems like nine years and five weeks. The first
thing at a time. What else can I say? I know. I was going
week seemed like a year and the second week seemed
to say where we have breakfast but I wasn’t allowed to for
like five years and the third week seemed like a year
terrorist threat reasons. I was told.
again and the fourth week seemed like eight weeks and
the fifth week, that seemed just like a week. Well, that’s
By the way: I have a huge NON-flat screen computer. It’s
not too bad. I could happily spend my whole life making
funny because people always think of Europe as sooooo
the trip. Getting off early this way I get some fresh air at
advanced. Not so! But we do have a great corporate
least.
culture and very bright people.
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Then at 1:00pm we usually go to get some lunch. We
In the evening I spent 5.1 hours doing leisure activities at
either go outside or inside. I usually have a sandwich or
the local leisure activities centre (I am a member of a gym
cold pasta. Today I thought we would rate all the people
for the gay and wanna be celebrities. The gym opened
in our team according to our rating scheme, C5 for good,
7 years ago - but they still have the grand opening sign
C9 for the not so. But we talked about diversity. Interest-
hanging outside with the balloons.) I spent 1.8 hours do-
ingly someone mentioned that diversity regarding race, or
ing household activities. During the remaining 4.8 hours,
sexual orientation doesn’t guarantee that people will have
I ate, drank, shopped and watched TV. I don’t remember
different opinions. So everybody was like, What? Who?
what I had for dinner but it was good. Watching TV was
Gay? I didn’t know! Really? So as you can imagine we
the leisure activity that occupied the most time tonight. It
had a fun afternoon. Then back to work and eat in front of
normally accounts for about half of my leisure time on av-
your computer. At around 7pm I get out and back home.
erage. Socialising, such as visiting with friends or attend-
Having 8.6 hours sleep, today it really was a good day in
ing or hosting social events, can be the next most com-
work. I seem to get in the mood, to just get right into the
mon leisure activity, accounting for about three-quarters
working mood. I can be bothered to do everything today.
of an hour per day. But today I just watched TV mostly.
Let’s hope it’s exactly the same tomorrow.
There’s not, I think, a single episode of Damn Average
Victim that I didn’t see. Tonight’s episode featured John
This is a picture of an outdoor pool. As you can see there
Smeaton singing the words of Plath’s Ennui:
is almost nobody there.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
Some highlights from the day include:
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
• Working about an hour less than employed men.
tilts at terror as downright absurd
• This guy calls me and says he is excited about my
resume and asks if I was interested in a new position.
to the tune of Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great Balls of Fire played
He didn’t tell me what the job was.
out by WAGS repeatedly kicking blazing jihadists in the
• Spending about an hour less than employed adult
testicles to create different yell tones. Weird :( I must have
women (18 years and over) doing household activities
gone to bed around a quarter after ten. I need a lot of
and caring for household members.
sleep, and so I like to be in bed by then. I must have read
a while. The latest one by Shane Ritchie or something
in that style. I am pretty tired! yawn. Otherwise not much
news. Ah... yes. :)
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Graeme Todd
Utopos ha Bocas peu la chama polta chamaan.
Bargol he maglomi baccan soma gymnosophon
Agrama gymnosophon labarembacha bodamilomin.
Volvalva barchin herman, la lavolvola dramme pagloni.
Utopos me General from not island made island.
Alone I of-lands all without philosophy
State philosophical I-have-formed for - mortals.
Willingly I-impart my things, not not-willingly I-accept better-ones.
Nowhere Nothing Fuckup, acrylic on panel, 105 x 120cm, 2007
Graeme Todd
Born in Glasgow in 1962, studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee. Has exhibited extensively
including solo shows at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, Leeds Metropolitan University
and Osaka Contemporary Arts Centre. Lives and works in East Lothian and is a lecturer in Drawing and Painting at ECA.
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David Chieppo
I have championed many things.
I have kissed gorgeous girls,
not only farewell notes
and fought rather rough men;
and unfinished letters,
brown-skinned blonds
thank you cards
and blue-eyed brunettes,
and change of address forms,
big and small,
but other things worthy of praise.
thick and thin.
I have championed the third grade, fourth grade tough they were,
and fifth grade too.
but I championed them.
middle school, high school
I have spent time with loners,
and everything in between,
hustlers and hoodlums.
like summer vacations
drank whiskey with jailbirds
and the crashing of automobiles.
and beer with poet losers.
classy things as well,
I’ve eaten in fancy restaurants,
like wrestling matches
walked through airports without a passport,
and wedding anniversaries,
scraped barnacles off ships,
roller skating rinks on friday nights
and had sissy jobs with post-graduate twits.
and birthday parties with piñatas sometimes;
I have championed many more things,
giraffes, gorillas,
this is not all.
elephants and donkeys.
I would tell you all about it,
pirates and alligators,
give you the three hour tour,
bambiis and bunnies.
but the risk is too great
I have championed all of these things
and there are no more stars.
and much much more
Untitled, mixed media on paper, 29.5 x 21cm , 2005
David Chieppo
Born 1973 in New Haven, Connecticut USA. Studied at Pennysylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philidelphia and Hochschule
fur Gestaltung, Zurich. Has exhibited widely including solo shows at Kunsthaus Glarus, Galerie Brigitte Weiss, Zurich and
Kunstmuseum Thun. Recipient of Manor Art Prize Zurich, Kunstmuseum Winterthur. Lives and works in Zurich.
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Untitled, mixed media on paper, 29.5 x 21cm , 2005
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Boards of Canada
Boards of Canada’s anachronistic visual work often utilises partially-degraded 8mm
and 16mm film sources, VHS video, Polaroid stills and other vintage formats.
As with their uniquely introspective music, the duo’s photographic imagery reveals an
obsession with fleeting, transient moments, and the accumulative damage and subsequent
loss associated with the passage of time. Fragments of 8mm celluloid are zoomed-in on
so extremely as if to draw attention to the film grain itself. Sun-bleached family
snapshots appear to show unreachable lost faces trapped forever behind a murky patina
of age, whilst innocuous frames suddenly take on a feeling of foreboding, having been
burned and melted within the shutters of a faulty projector. Boards of Canada’s music
is notable for the band’s heavy use of “unorthodox recording techniques” to achieve
intentional flaws such as badly-pressed vinyl fluctuations and tape wow and flutter.
Their sweet but vaguely disturbing sleeve imagery has been described as “oneiric”,
and it is a perfect analogue for their surreal, melancholy melodies.
Images and unused images created for the sleeve artwork of the albums “Geogaddi” (2002) & “The Campfire Headphase” (2005).
Boards of Canada
Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin have been creating music and experimental films together since the early eighties. Their film
work is a focal element in their live shows. The band’s first publicly-available release was 1995’s “Twoism” LP on their own label
Music70. Their follow-up album “Music Has The Right To Children” (1998 Warp Records) was an international cult hit. They have
since released a string of albums and EP’s and collaborated with various artists including Beck, Meat Beat Manifesto and San
Francisco’s Anticon collective. Boards of Canada are currently based near Edinburgh in Scotland.
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Edward Summerton
About 30 years ago when I was a young teenager hitching to the north of Scotland, I got a lift from these Germans.
The man in the back with me asked if he could have my tub of margarine in exchange for the lift; which seemed fair as they
took me all the way to Rannoch Moor…. Gateway to the Glens?…. A life-size sculpture of Bon Scott, cast in Kirriemuir rock
stands in the field, licked into shape by a woman called Rosie…..Highway to Hell?…. A naked man is sitting in the woods
with a tree stump up his arse, a branch poking from his mouth….. Smells like white spirit?…. A lone bat is flying low to the
ground in broad daylight, its limp callipered legs brushing the pollen from the mid summer flowers….. Lock up your
otters?.… A collection of twelve freshly blown hares eggs lie in a cotton-wool filled cardboard box….. Black Forest ghetto?….
Plastic vampire’s teeth are opened out and painted to resemble a snow capped mountain- range with enclosed lake…..
Easels ripped my flesh?…Jimmy Shand and Macintosh Patrick hold hands in a magic circle……
Oh oh - The knowing, then not knowing, then pretending to know, is creeping in.
Black House to White House, gouache on printed image, 90cm x 60cm, 2007
Edward Summerton
An artist whose work has expanded from the practice of painting into books, prints, sound works, objects and collaboration.
He has recently organised events and exhibitions, which have included Blind Sight, Doctor Skin, Bird of the Devil and Digital
VD. He is a Fine Art lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College, University of Dundee. www.edwardsummerton.co.uk
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El Frauenfelder
El Frauenfelder is fascinated by the myths and stereotypes of the American Wild West: cowboys, outlaws, gunmen,
hunters. In her paintings as well as in her animations, Frauenfelder deconstructs and interprets the macho culture that
we have learned to love and hate through Hollywood westerns. With Fauenfelder’s striking technique and flare for details
in both movement, colours and expressions, the western tropes are taken to a higher level than the mere representational.
The Wild West clichés step out of the dull and obvious, and reveal a portrait of the vulnerable human condition with its
aspects of fear, loss and longing.
In STEAKHOUSE, a complex shifting narrative leads the spectator into a dreamlike universe shifting between different
spheres. All the ingredients of the classical western movie are here: the lonely railroad leading to nowhere, endless prairies,
cadavers, bad guys, the lonely rider, the saloon and the temptress. But Frauenfelder adds surprising and surreal twists that
make the movie both humorous and uncanny at the same time. The movie is filled with contradictions; the artist mixes the
lonely rider’s drift into the sunset with the rock’n’roll hero playing his guitar. The cowboy turns into a humble symbol of
mankind’s fragility and sadness of a weeping clown, who again turns into a skull and then back again into a clown.
The saloon turns into a modern bar with neon signs and rock music - the old time western and modern cityscape melting
in a dark, nightmarish vision.
Gianni Jetzer
Original biro drawing from STEAKHOUSE, 2005 7:13 min, Animation, DVD, Soundtrack: Jacobee, Vocals;
Danni Dov
El Frauenfelder
Born in 1979 in Zurich, Switzerland. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2005. She lives and works in
Zurich, for paintings by El Frauenfelder see: www.likeyou.com/brigitteweiss/el_frauenfelder.html
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San Keller
Born 1971, Bern, Switzerland. Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Exhibited widely including Galerie Brigitte Weiss,
Kunst museum Bern, Centre for Fine Arts Brussels. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre, New York.
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San Keller
THE GREAT LIGHTENING
The Swiss Federal office of Culture made it possible for San Keller to spend a year in New York, where he was involved
in the studio programme of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre. As a contribution to his simultaneous leaving and arrival San
Keller took a Bernese sandstone that weighed exactly the same as himself to New York. Attaching a rope to the cube shaped
sandstone, he dragged it through the streets of New York until it had crumbled to dust.
THE GREAT LIGHTENING Video still DVD, I h 52 min 52 sec, 2004
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Charles Stiven
Questioning what is real and what is fake leads to other considerations ;Good or bad? Right or wrong? High or low? etc.
However, fortunately and unfortunately, the world is not black and white,
but infinite shades of grey.
THE HIGH GROUND
Synthetic systemising. Contradictory concepts of morality.
Who is ascending, who is descending?
Are not those who rise highest often the lowest?
or
Space shuttle Challenger,
up to the stars, syphoning our imagination,
back down to earth in little black boxes.
THE HIGH GROUND, Wood/Acrylic, 60cm x 12cm x 10cm each (multiples).
Charles Stiven
Born in Aberdeen in 1960. He studied Drawing & Painting at ECA. Over the past 20 years his work has been shown widely
in the U.K, Europe and the U.S.A., and is held in many public and private collections. He has recieved numerous awards and
scholarships both at home and abroad. In the past few years he has had solo exhibitions in Belgrade, New York, Bern and
Wroclaw, and held artists residencies in Serbia and Switzerland. He was recently included in “Drawing - Space, Form &
Expression”, published in association with The Drawing Centre, New York, and last year work was purchased by the newly
opened Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern. Charles Stiven lives and works in Edinburgh, and is a lecturer in drawing & painting at ECA.
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Soland Goose
Soland Goose, Hatched in 1967 after a two thousand four hundred and twenty four day incubation, Soland Goose is a connective
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collaboration based near the Bass Rock on the east coast of Scotland.
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Schmidt telescope plate.
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spoon
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Michael Windle
“P2”
Michael Windle
Video 2007
Words Gerry Mitchell
Music Brian Cope
Michael Windle
Born 1958 studied Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone, before taking up residence at Delfina Studios in the east end of London
in the early nineties. Since returning to Scotland ten years ago his work has become more focused on video and multi media.
He collaborated with the composer Brian Cope on a commission “Beginning Ending” for the Threshold installation at Perth
Concert Hall last year and renews the partnership for this project “Pilgrim” Mike is a Lecturer in Digital art at ECA.
www.porty.net/pilgrim
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Paul Keir
FOUR POLES, EACH 2.7M LONG, TWO GREEN AND TWO WHITE.
ONE OF EACH CUT INTO APPROXIMATE EQUAL LENGTHS.
TWO POLES REASSEMBLED WITH ALTERNATE GREEN AND WHITE PIECES,
PROPPED AGAINST WALL OR LAID ON FLOOR.
“TRANSLATION” 2007
Paul Keir
Has degrees from the University of Aberdeen and ECA, where he also obtained his MFA. He has exhibited widely, in UK and
abroad, though rarely recently. He lives and works in Edinburgh. The work begins with drawing and can utilise a range of
formal strategies - painting, objects, floorworks, wall drawing. More recently there has been a more explicit acknowledgement
of a kind of nostalgic regard for the givens of a particular kind of modernist and minimalistic painting.
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Eri Itoi
I lose myself when people look at me.
I feel they walk all over me.
I get overcome by people.
I always look at the dark side of my life.
BHennaAtamaDatoOmotteRundeSho KocchiMinaiDe, Pencil on Paper, 29.7 x 21cm, 2007
Eri Itoi
Born in Tochigi, Japan (1982) studied Drawing and Painting at ECA. The Volta Show, Basel. Art Chicago, Chicago.
Salon 2007: New British Painting and Works on Paper, London. Chinmi (Solo show), Edinburgh. Zoo Art Fair, London.
Particulars (Solo show), London.
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Norman Shaw
Starless And Bible Black Sabbath
(or This ain’t the Summer of Love)
Hadit! Passed the stars to void field glimmer to rend veil
Shining field vibrates the waveform priestess suns to
and durational chamber sonorous.
curved horizon. Climb! Holy form the whirling wondrous
Flash! Death nettle broken nightshade: Still warm Ancient
triplicate:
electric, archaic, cosmic, doubt… clash! Straight to their
The Queenly flux: Descend! Fingal spunk crimson bed
eyeball wicks, heretic, frolic, skeptic… critics fade out,
the sly secret joy worm howling stormrose bled invisible
flash! Blood day incomprehensible feel his sin in the grave
bee teeth boy on Templest theme tussock (aerial scream,
frost yard eye Flash! fleshless scream (sidereal) grasp the
I land) itchy & scratchy catch a witch. Ancient burning
twilit head accelerate. Ahead feeling hiss kaleidoscopic
rides melancholic beam rape the returned sun holy scion
heightening. Unendurable. Polyhedronal churned tone pat-
hill circles wither sins: mindforged sword bled wings on
tern dimly sent climax the heightening ascent butt of loose
strange angles sings.
lightly sea-holy unlightened churchly and desire ruins.
Frighthouse fold: her forced green fuse driving the ageing
Violet! Shadow loom soundclothed majesty countless and
flow flowers to Eternal Light; or the light that never never
lordly. Immensional seduction volume ultramaximised.
warms. Parasitic bankblood state of satanic panic police
forever the Nightmare of the Organism: I am the one you
Discorporate! Vixen comet cupid comes. No-time: Unbind
warned me of. Are you loathesome tonight?
your mind bend diamonds time lick velvet up far away and
afar and a go-go from corporate logo (boin-n-n-n-n-n-g)
Now smell the stench of immortality: The starres are
drifting cloudless; starless…
marching sadly home. The ghosts of night shriek afar and
Arched grove theolithic groove golden salmon to two with
I have seen the meteors of death, so I put a habit on her
the woody owl boughs down rhythming a rhymer to mass
face when I listen to that Yes song ‘Yours is no Disgrace’,
true . The other one’s a duplicate!
mine is no disgrace. I see nothing! Nothing… the fields
in a whirling dance with the trees and long trails of birds
traversing the air disturbs my blood and brain but my eyes
turned within only see starless and bible black.
Norman Shaw
Born Ullapool 1970. MA, Mphil, MFA (Edinburgh); PhD (Dundee). Work ranges from drawing and painting to texts and music.
He exhibits, publishes, performs and releases music internationally. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Generator,
Dundee in 2006, and Highland at the RSA in June this year. He is currently a lecturer in Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone
College, University of Dundee.
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flaming bard starred 2007
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Lee T O’Connor
Dear Mr Dick,
Are you still wondering what makes for good art? Do I have to keep pretending to know or even care. It seems that I have made
some fake reality for myself here.
Do you get bad reviews? I suppose so, I have received one to my knowledge and reckon I would have many more if anyone
knew who the hell I was.
“Flimsily nailed to the wall,” I’m sure I used drawing pins, “makes for a rather bleak show” doesn’t she know that NM says
I “constantly seek to eradicate the chic from the shabby.” Well, whatever you think yourself. Apparently RC’s “fragments of
thought and childish delight in colour are somewhat welcome relief” from my “melancholic musings.” In the past were you not
pounded for producing pulp fictitious nonsense? I seem to be pounded for not. What do those students at the Student News Paper
know anyway, wait until these happy students hit the MAD (Melancholic Alcoholic Depression.) Oh well this is what I get for
vainly trawling the net for a crumb of a mention of myself. Anyway this was years ago and she could be right, her fake
reality could be fine tuned into Greenberg’s channel, looking for works of art whose blankness offer a sublime and contemplative
response. Could it have been better if I didn’t feel that I had to make the art to fit into what I said I would do? Anyhow it has its
own memories now, a fake reality if you like. When I pretend that all was meant, does this fake reality become more real?
Anyway dear Philip I’m changing my ways, as you once fantasized about substituting fake birds at Disneyland - the ones that
worked by electric motors and emit claws and shriek as you pass them by. You wished to substitute them with real ones and
somehow rendering the park incorruptible, I too have been substituting my fake art into, incorruptible, genuine attempts of
creating a romantic vision of which we do so dearly miss. Has my world become so corruptible that I feel the only way to
move forward is to move back, even right back to someone I have never been. We will see how long I can keep this up for.
Yours truly,
Lee Thomas O’Connor
The Long Sea Bleating, water colour on paper, 2007
Lee T O’Connor
Lee T O’Connor studied at ECA 1997 - 2003 and is currently teaching at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.
www.leeoconnor.co.uk, [email protected]
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Tommy Crooks
It was Wednesday afternoon at half-past two and I was in a real hurry as I had to go to the bank to get some wages out so
I jumped into my car and drove up Church Street towards the town centre. I turned on to Winton Place and parked outside
The Photography Shop. I then turned off the engine. As I was doing this, I noticed an unusual, large, white, shape ahead
to my left and at a distance of no more than six metres from my car.
“What….. is that?” I asked myself as I tried to focus on the object. To my complete surprise, I realised that I was staring at
a huge- bare- female- arse?
My brain wouldn’t immediately allow me to accept what my eyes were seeing, but, on second glance, I established that it
was indeed a bare arse! I zoomed my eyes in towards the arse and noticed, to my further surprise and total incredulity, a
stream of urine gushing from between the cheeks.
”Ke – rist…. Almighty!” I said aloud. ”Is that a woman doing a pish on the pavement? ” I got out of the car and activated my
“Force Field” as I floated past her in an arc. When I had negotiated my way around her semi crouching figure, I turned my
head and saw that she was lighting up a Richmond Menthol Kingsize Cigarette. She had also managed to fasten her
pish-sodden jeans around her flabby belly in the blink of an eye.
“Street Vermin” I muttered venomously under my breath.
Anyway, I continued on to the bank and withdrew the money I needed and then drove back down Church Street to my
house. I had to put a new roof on this particular house. I also built three bedrooms and a shower room into the attic space.
I fitted solid wooden floors throughout and I also put a dimmer switch in the living room to help me achieve a relaxed
ambience in the evenings.
Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, digital photographic print, 101.6cm x 127cm, 2007
Tommy Crooks
Born in Govan (1963) studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee. The Art Of The Fall, Berlin. Strategic Art Gets,
Embassy, Blind Sight, Titanik Artspace, Finland. Played guitar for cult British rock group The Fall.
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Alexander Guy
El PASO
Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl
Night time would find me in Rosa’s cantina
Music would play and Felina would twirl
Just for a moment I stood there in silence
Shocked by the foul, evil deed I had done
Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina
Many thoughts raced through my mind as I stood there
Wicked and evil while casting a spell
I had but one chance and that was to run
My love was deep for this Mexican maiden
I was in love, but in vain I could tell
Out through the back door of Rosa’s I ran
Out where the horses were tied
One night a wild young cowboy came in
I caught a good one, it looked like it could run
Wild as the West Texas wind
Up on its back and away I did ride
Dashing and daring, a drink he was sharing
Just as fast as I could from the West Texas town of El Paso
With wicked Felina the girl that I loved
Out of the badlands of New Mexico
So in anger I challenged his right for the love of this maiden
Back in El Paso my life would be worthless
Down went his hand for the gun that he wore
Everything’s gone: in life nothing is left
My challenge was answered in less than a heartbeat
It’s been so long since I’ve seen the young maiden
The handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor
My love is stronger than my fear of death
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I saddled up and away I did go
Riding alone in the dark
Maybe tomorrow a bullet will find me
Tonight nothing’s worse than the pain in my heart
And at last here I am on the hill overlooking El Paso
But my love for Felina is strong and I rise where I’ve fallen
I can see Rosa’s Cantina below
Though I am weary, I can’t stop to rest
My love is strong and it pushes me onward
I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle
Down off the hill to Felina I go
I feel the bullet go deep in my chest
Off to my right I see five mounted cowboys
From out of nowhere Felina has found me
Off to my left ride a dozen or more
Kissing my cheek as she kneels by my side
Shouting and shooting, I can’t let them catch me
Cradled by two loving arms that I’ll die for
I have to make it to Rosa’s back door
One little kiss, then Felina good-bye
Something is dreadfully wrong, for I feel
Words and music by Marty Robbins
El Paso
A deep burning pain in my side
Though I am trying to stay in the saddle
I’m getting weary, unable to ride
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‘El Paso’, oil on canvas, 260cm x 330cm, 2007
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Christian Vetter
In the horizon of the infinite.- We have left the
land and have embarked! We have burned our
bridges behind us - indeed, we have gone further
and destroyed the land behind us! Now, little ship,
look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it
does not always roar, and at times it lies spread
out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness.
But hours will come when you will realize that it is
infinite and that there is nothing more awesome
than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and
now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you
feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more
freedom—and there is no longer any “land”!
Christian Vetter
Christian Vetter was born in 1970 and lives and works in Zurich Has exhibited widely including solo shows at Kunstmuseum
St.Gallen, Galerie Brigitte Weiss, Zurich and Museum Langmatt, Baden. He was the recipient of the Manor-Preis 2008,
St. Gallen and the studio grant Beijing, China, Stiftung GegenwArt Bern.
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“Whither is God?” he cried. “I will tell you.
We have killed him - you and I! All of us are his
murderers! But how did we do this? How could
we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge
to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we
doing when we unchained this earth from its
sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we
moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging
continually? And backward, sideward, forward, in
all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are
we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do
we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not
become colder? Is not night continually closing in
on us?“
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science, Book III,
124 / 125, Translation by Walter Kaufmann
Untitled, Gouache,ink, chalk on paper, 29.5 x 21cm , 2007
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The Lonely Piper
The Thrawn Chorus
He’d roused himself much earlier than normal because
Guided by the torch bright light of Venus, (his sometime
he’d yet again been troubled by early morning glimpses
mourning star, when death had left him bereft) he arrived
of eternity. Snippets of nightmare, nonsensical and
at a destination at the bottom of the privet lined street.
garbled in nature had prevented a peaceful slumber.
He sat, and perched bird-like on the worn sandstone
His half conscious mind, jolted itself awake repeatedly
wall directly across the road from her house, his elegant
in a panic-stricken fuddle, with an express desire to
fingers absent-mindedly rubbing the geological Braille
extricate itself immediately and without ceremony, from
of the surface beneath him, a stately sandstone
this cruelly imagined void. A dreamed desolation, devoid
bejewelled with a smattering of summer dew and some
entirely of anything approaching life. He decided to defer
knobbles of well weathered lichen. He listened intently,
sleep until later in the day, when his pillow may re-offer
quite mesmerised, to the melodious blackbird perched
solace as opposed to the auguring of breathless horror.
on her gable. A tiny passeriforme of performer, spot-lit
by that curious ultra-violet light of dawn, with yellow beak
For as long as anyone could remember he had had
wide open, releasing a continuous liquid litany of song.
an unfortunate trait to his character, whereby, without
Suited up in black and yellow, like a Wasp or a Bumble;
meaning to, he would subconsciously upset merry
a tiny svelte non-stinging Pavarotti of the urban stage.
people and overly jubilant friends with an occasional
burst of cod-melancholic eloquence. On the other hand,
Utterly bewitched he breathed in the cool air thick with
if they unwittingly offended his darker archaic sensibili-
growth and revival, and savoured the rich and heady
ties and seemed to lead always illuminated and untrou-
mingling of scents and the burgeoning aromatics of
bled lives, he would remind them (in a round about kind
summer, an odour that assumed a pregnant shape
of way) of death whether they needed reminding or not,
in his minds-eye; conjured from a pagan elixir of
but in a way that wasn’t at all overt, but subliminal in its
pheromone. His mind wandered gangrel-like, and
sneakiness. Standing back, he would then watch their ex-
he thought abstractly about navigating through the
pressions change ever so slightly as internal strife quickly
neighbourhood without eyes, instinctively utilising the
fleeted over their features like cloud shadow, and the
complex network of birdsong that he could hear all
abyss sucked them in, planting uncomfortable butterflies
around, to wend his way home safely and without
in their stomachs and a dark whistling fog of dread in their
collision via signposts of sound alone, a tangled web
hearts. He liked to share and share alike with his unwitting
of tune and ever so pleasant musical meander through
kindred.
the warm and comforting darkness of closed eyes; a
blindness simply cured by the opening of eyelids.
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Everywhere the operatic song of the blackbird sounded;
bodyguard, protecting him against an antediluvian evil.
a wonderful bubbling trill that an exhausted mind could
find quite distracting, off-putting even, a chorus
He’d wait with the patience of the paralysed for the
commissioned by insomnia to accompany an impending
vacated space betwixt her chimneys to be reoccupied,
personal apocalypse that might detonate in his mind at
reassuring himself that the gable-end song would resume
any moment. The void had to be appeased: a personal
and remain the same. Satisfied that it had and was,
sacrifice of feather, flesh, beak and bone had to be
he roused himself from his deeply satisfied stupor
offered. The time was imminent and soon to be now.
and brushed past the pink fairy thimbles of the solitary
foxglove that guarded against intruders (and heart
A circling whiff of lavender from the herbaceous border
attacks) at the head of the path. A clarity had been
entered his neb and settled his jangled nerves. Taking
restored to his life, and he felt that a prolonged period of
a deep steadying breath to muffle the natural shake of
bother had punctuated itself with a welcome full-stop; no
the human machine, he slowly took aim with an imagined
more bother, not never. The street lamp to his left shone
firearm; he manoeuvred the rifle incrementally, until he
even brighter it seemed, surrounded by a cat’s cradle of
had the joyous little bird in the crosshairs of his innately
powdered satellites as adoring moths aplenty erratically
Evil Eye. Then exhaling slowly and deliberately he gently
orbited the false sodium sun of its amber illumination.
squeezed the trigger and fired a thought at the bird like
Twilight budged up slowly and gave way to a quite perfect
explosive buckshot. With an abrupt ending of song the
mother of pearl sky striated with what appeared to be
Blackbird Tommy Coopered, mid-gig, and took a
streaks of sunlight, but were in fact the brilliantly illumi-
swan-dive like slump onto slate and slid downwards to
nated contrails of aeroplanes. He turned to the right at
do a little jump off the jutting rone to bounce with a
the top of the path to wend his way upwards towards the
percussive thud off of the old widow’s wheelie bin; landing
crest of his hill, where the shortening of shadows ushered
elegantly on her diminutive lawn. He ambled over and
in a new day, he paused, turned and admired the orange
picked up the small body of the bird still warm and
constellation of Newport, glistening star-like across the
trembling, as the rhythm of life faded and its nerves
mirrored Tay. In that small town the celestial bodies of
settled into final rigor, its musical clogs well and truly
Northern Fife were still sleeping in their beds, serenaded
popped. He buried the bird under the old widow’s Rowan
subliminally by a new dawn’s chorus. Unconscious, thus
Tree under a two inch covering of humus with a reverence
unaware of the secret ceremony that had just taken place
befitting its’ gift to the world of song. The Rowan being his
across the sacred water.
symbolic angel of the North and his red berried
The Lonely Piper 2007
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Neil Mulholland
Neil Mulholland is a writer. He is Director for the Centre of Visual and Cultural Studies and leads the MA in Contemporary Art
Theory at ECA.
Liz Adamson - Spoon
Born Bo’ness (1959) studied Drawing and Painting at ECA. Has shown extensively in the UK, and abroad including Round
Room Talbot Rice, Edinburgh, Frontstore, Basel Switzerland, La Cajachina Gallery Seville Spain. Lives and works in East
Lothian and is a lecturer in Drawing and Painting at ECA.
Norman Shaw - references Starless And Bible Black Sabbath (or This ain’t the Summer of Love)
Sampled and remixed texts from (in order of appearance): Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno, Blue Öyster Cult,
Aleister Crowley, Black Sabbath, Deleuze & Guattari, Melt Banana, Austin Osman Spare, HP Lovecraft, Arthur Machen,
Stewart Home, Algernon Blackwood, Dylan Thomas, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Neil M Gunn, Nimrod33,
Om, Bill Drummond, William Blake, William Shakespeare, The Simpsons, Darkthrone, Mayhem, Mr Lahey, St John the Divine,
Thomas Ligotti, Coil, Slayer, Current 93, Ossian, Melvins & Foetus, Lautréamont, King Crimson. Butt of Lewis True Thomas
Alexander Guy
Born 1962 St Andrews, Scotland. Studied Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee and Royal College, London.
Has exhibited widely in Europe and America including The Prague Biennale, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf and Caetello Di Rivara,
Torino, Italy.
The Lonely Piper
A solitudinous soul, supernaturalist and ancient provocateur, romantically entwined with the rugged grandeur and unrivalled
splendour of his spiritual environs. His physical age is thirty two, metaphysically however his vital essence is older than myth.
During the summer months he is prone to the romantic malady of ‘Heather Pollen Lung’ when he sometimes wishes he could
shrink to a size diminutive so’s he could hug a midge.
Rachel MacLean and Diane Edwards.
http://dp.eca.ac.uk/2009/rachel
[email protected]
Front cover: Acknowledgments to Rene Vidmér, 1954.
Back cover: Graeme Todd, ‘ Hey Unk’ (detail), acrylic on canvas, 2007.
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POLARCAP
Would like to thank the following:
East Lothian Council
Edinburgh College of Art
Brigitte Weiss
Lesley Smith
Duncan Bremner
Rachel Menzies
Josh Christopherson
Billy Caulfield
Rachel Maclean
Diane Edwards
Naomi
Struan
Keir
Malcolm
The Bird
All the Astronomers (keep up the good work)
And Know That We Love You
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Liz Adamson . Boards of Canada . Charles Stiven . Christian Vetter . Graeme Todd . David Chieppo . Paul Keir
Edward Summerton . El Frauenfelder . Eri Itoi . San Keller . Alexander Guy . Soland Goose . Lee T OʼConnor
Norman Shaw . Tommy Crooks . Michael Windle
eca
edinburgh college of art
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