Friday 29 July 2011

Please Add What Makes You Proud of Glasgow...

Like all good bloggers, I am getting lazy. Update the blog? No, I'd rather go onto Messenger and see if RolePlayGurl28 is hanging out. Besides, July is Vile Arts' Research and Development Month. Producer Harry and idiot Gareth are hanging out in cool bars, attending hip openings and networking. I'm the one in the beret, asking if anyone has a cigarette.

After eight months of being The Vile Arts Radio Hour, I decided that I wanted to be the Vile Arts Media Empire. As Rupert Murdoch's machine is slowly clogged up by the blood of innocent celebrity victims, my vague ideas about collectivism, collaboration and connectivity are poised to slip onto News International's Throne of Blood.

Just as soon as I can afford to get my internet put back on.

In the meantime, I am opening myself up to experience. Although I am not really keen on putting this blog into the public domain officially just yet, I am slapping down plenty of "first thought, best thought" ruminations. I am scattering the fragments of my experience across the floor like my dirty clothes, and seeing whether they can be pieced into a vision.

Subcity Radio has been a revelation. Online radio is one of those interestingly liminal media: not quite completely modern - the form preexists the shit-pump - it retains a heritage that goes back to shacks on hills, a single transmitter bleeping out the hillbilly music and anxious words of conspiracy theorists.

And blogs - well, they aren't even that contemporary. But the freedom of access attracts me, the ease of creation... no waiting, no editing. If I put the spell check on, they are reasonably readable, even after an all-night coffee binge.

Although the grammar check is very generous about my multiple clause sentences.

I know that I live in a city that is dynamic, and I love that I am going to walk out into the night in about twenty minutes to find something free and cool.

The Vile Arts has to be about documenting that.

I want to document it. I want to talk abut Noise Music with Kylie. I want to see Avenue Q through the filter of Live Art. I want to disrupt the business as usual of politics, which sees art as either a luxury or a branch of the social services.

I want to bring back the excitement I felt being in Prague. Not the excitement of cheap pints and accidentally walking in on a live sex show - I did think a cover charge was a bit steep for a local bar - but the realisation that twenty years ago, The Czech Republic had only ballet and folk dance: now it has radical dance companies and a big festival that rivals our own New Territories in scope and variety.

And I want Glasgow to remember that the "Glasgow Effect" is a buzz word for all slightly impoverished cities that want to rescue themselves through culture.

Let's hope the City Council remember that it is the artists who rescued the Merchant City, not the town planners.

So beneath this sad little entry, if you must read it, please add what makes you proud to live in Glasgow. Then I can steal your ideas and turn them into ten minutes of radio,

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