Friday 15 February 2013

Warriors in the Tube

Behind all of these blog posts is a secret campaign. It isn't just about the relentless need for my ego to parade itself up and down the super-information highway, like a streaker waving at passing trucks from the hard shoulder of the M8. I am waging a war against the mundane reality that excludes art from the traffic of daily life.

The Glasgow Film Festival has always had my heart, because it is not just aimed at the industry (festivals can frequently become hermetically sealed bubbles, in which the artists and the audience are the same people). It did get the Glasgow Marketing Board involved, and they say it is about attracting tourists, but we all know the truth. The GFF is for the people of Glasgow. That's why it has the classic film strand, and the cool art films that fit in with the culture of a city that is full of DIY projects and galleries.

I am championed SPT's use of the subway as a cinema today. Since it is sold out, I can't be accused of being a salesman. I just believe that this is exactly the sort of project that fits my secret agenda.

The experience of watching a film in an unfamiliar location is good enough (how I remember the magic of seeing Back to the Future projected on a wall in Athens - the romance of the warm night breeze and the thrill of hearing Michael J Fox speak in badly dubbed Greek), but the choice of film, which might be The Warriors, connects the film to the space. The magic of bisociation is made all the more complex: it is a film set in a subway, shown in a subway.

And it works both ways. It is a reminder that a station can be more than a station. St Enoch is no longer the place where I get off to buy toys at Hamley's. It retains the traces of the film.

I long to see a city alive with art, where the discussions of music, film and theatre inform the broader understanding of politics, architecture and life. And if everyone is talking about it, more of those passing trucks might stop for this naked hitcher...

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