venta

Sunday this week was very much not a day of rest.

Once up, we trundled out to Battersea Park to visit Magic Show, a touring exhibition currently hanging out at the Pump House Gallery. (NB Judging by the URL, that link to the exhibition won't work if you're visiting from The Future). According to the blurb, the exhibition would consider "how both art and magic employ perception-shifting tactics that exploit the power of suggestion", and so forth.

Actually, it was a fairly dichotomous affair. Some exhibits were magic props, and some were rather tenuously-related art. A couple (like a moving sculpture made of two pieces of A4) managed to cross the boundary, but in large parts it felt like an exhibition which had started as a grand scheme, then rather lost its way. Also, it had a lot of ten-minute-plus video installations, which are a personal bugbear of mine. Completely without justification, I don't like video installations. In general, they don't work unless you see them beginning to end, and you are more or less bound to meet them in the middle. Although I can spend upwards of ten minutes looking at a stationary artwork, I resent the video's demand that I watch it for a set amount of time to get the full effect.

So, as exhibitions go, I wouldn't give it a ringing endorsement. But it had some good bits, and it was in an interesting building, set in a nice park. The park contained at least one genuinely friendly squirrel which bounded expectantly up to ChrisC even before he offered it an acorn. And it had some pleasant sub-tropical gardens (the park, not the squirrel) and meant I walked a bit of London I've never really seen before.

Also, I discovered that Battersea Power Station looks considerably larger when you're on the North side of Chelsea Bridge than when on the South. I have no idea why this is. Maybe it's shy, and tries to hide as you get closer.

The Wellcome Collection has decided that they're going to update Mr Henry Wellcome's "curious collection", and invited anyone to take them an object for their new collection. As deranged art projects go, I think this is fairly loony, but the euphonious title of a "Bring-a-Thing-a-Thon" suckered me in and Sunday saw me bringing them my Thing.

The Things have been carefully catalogued and photographed by the curators, and are displayed in the form of a calendar; the curious can find my Thing illustrating 25th November. It did make me chuckle to see the curators carefully donning their white cotton gloves to handle an object that's been perfectly happily slumming it in our spare wardrobe.

For those who like their exhibitions a bit odd, I recommend visiting Things while it's on. Drifting round the room viewing the mismatched collection was surprisingly entertaining. Extremely valuable, and valued, artifacts mix with donations people have made out of museum flyers. The blurbs people have written range from banal to outrageously pretentious. If you're hanging about on Euston Road, I'd recommend sticking your nose in.

In the evening, we headed over to the Relentless Garage[*]. I'd chosen the smaller of the two Neubauten gigs on this weekend, not realising that this one was more of an oddity. A showing of a film, a photography exhibition (not that I ever located that) and a short set of rarities.

We sat and bewailed the terrible beer for a while, and watched the film (a collage of performances, interviews and oddments from the band's 30 year career) then wombled downstairs to find

skorpionuk and

zotz, whom it was lovely to see after such a long time.

Once the band came on stage, I briefly attempted to apply my usual tickybox review approach: how many drummers? Er, well, there are four people hitting things with sticks. Name on the drum? Er, well, actually, they don't have that kind of a drum. Four percussionists, but not a full drum kit. Oh, one of them's now playing bass. And they're all singing... oh, I give up.

The thing that struck me while watching Neubauten is that this - surely - is what experimental music ought to be all about. They use the most bewildering array of things to make noises (in many cases, "instruments" is pushing it) but they always end up with something that sounds like music. On the flip side, they don't have to go all out for the crazy corrugated-metal-and-traffic-cone approach - at one point they created a sustained (and sustainedly weird) piece of music using their voices alone.

Everyone else: take note. Don't let the avant garde get in the way of the music. If you're hitting a baked bean tin with a piece of wet string for effect, you may not be breaking new musical ground. You may just be an idiot with a baked bean tin.

Anyway, they made a series of noises which were just wonderful to listen to. The warm-down act of Hitman's Heel (the bassist's other band) would have, in other circumstances, been pretty good. As it was, they just seemed so... ordinary.

Anyone curious to check out Einstürzende Neubauten can see a selection of videos from various points in the last couple of decades on the band's own website (try Was Ist Ist and Sabrina for a varied introduction).

[*] I never think of that as a sponsorship name. It always reads to me like a mission statement. This garage is relentless! No matter what you do, it will drive on with its plan to be as garagey as is possible! Nothing will deny it the epitome of garageness! Do not stand in the way of the garage!

But maybe that's just me.