This Mark Titchner creation has appeared on City Billboards this month, courtesy of Eastside Projects. It’s a rallying call for grim times. A pervasive air of resignation over the 30% Arts spending cuts may yet turn to indignation, alarm and who knows, action, once the impact is truly felt – provoking a new fervour of politicisation. It’s hard to believe that we may’ve come out of a golden age of subsidy; that we may look back on those times and say ‘we never had it so good’.  Depressing also to think that hard work educating the nation in the value of Creativity and the Arts as elemental to social and educational engagement may amount to little once the various Govt. depts re-evaluate their budgets. Arts organisations have been used to trying to ‘diversify their income streams’, but if all of those income streams are cutting back their own budgets, then what hope?

I see the Titchner posters pitched up along the Middle Ring-road from Five Ways to Ladywood, a post-industrial landscape rendered desolate from the decline of the manufacturing in this City.  Nowadays many of these old abandoned factories are occupied by Arts organisations, who are particularly good at re-animating redundant (but importantly cheap) spaces.

Stan’s Cafe started the development process for a new show this week – The Cardinals, which will premiere in February. Suddenly it became VERY cold in the AEHarris Factory. This, as any Stanner will tell you, seems to be a prerequisite characteristic for any recent devising/rehearsal process for Stan’s Cafe. There’s a thesis out there for anyone interested in mapping the aesthetic impact of  ‘cold industrial’ on the company’s output.  Austerity measures will continue, but take note – creativity will not cease.

Visit this site to add your voice to the petition….SAVE THE ARTS

Further reflections on the drive down to Montpellier, as reported on the Stan’s Cafe website.

I have a day off. Not because I think I deserve one, but because the driving regulations in France prohibit the presence of a commercial vehicle on the roads. In all likelihood, The Black Maze might be exempt on the grounds that it is entertainment on wheels, or that it is educational….but we’re not going to wave a flag of dispute in front of the gendarmerie. So I get to spend a day wandering round the fine city of Orleans. I’ve been here before, about 15 years ago, during one of the epic road trips to the Cote d’Azur I took with Sara Liney, but now there’s more opportunity to explore – apart from the fact that it’s sunday, of course, and La France est fermée.

On closer inspection I can get into the Cathedral Sainte Croix with its stained glass depictions of the liberation of Orleans by la jeunesse Jeanne, I can get into La Maison de Jeanne d’Arc where I see replications of her figure and story in print and sculpture. I can get in to the Musee des Beaux Arts where there are several magnificent oils celebrating her arrival through the streets of Orleans in 1429. At each museum I am asked my nationality and am greeted with a stifled snigger. Perhaps it’s because my French is so merdre, or perhaps…. after nearly 600 years I am still blamed for the burning of their martyr?

Joan is everywhere. She is an industry, largely dating from the mid-Nineteenth Century. The Boulevard bearing her name, the bronze statue, the proliferation of her myth in print. Amidst the problems of the emerging Republic (Napoleon III) she could be used as an anchor-point to the Ideals of Liberte, Egalite and …the other one. It was the Age when Wagner was reappropriating the proto-nationalistic mythologies of the Rhine-maidens and also the Age in which the Merrye Old England of Shakspear was being championed. Stratford-upon-Avon remained a sleepy little market town until Matthew Arnold and the mid-Victorians got hold of its famous son and held him to ransom.

La Musee des Beaux Arts does have some excellent pieces tucked away. Amidst a welter of 18th Century portraiture a wonderful collection of local artist Leon Cogniet, a Raymond Mason (he of the destroyed public sculpture that once proudly stood Centenery Sq. in Brum) and the stunningly sexy Tamara di Lempicka oil ‘Saint-Moritz‘, which was a great surprise to see. Much smaller than I’d imagined but which I could’ve studied for hours.

The ordeal of driving a 7.5 tonne truck across Europe, seulement, seems not so bad after all. No need to play the martyr. Off now, from the Loire south to Bourges, then Clermont and beyond – destination Montpellier.

some more pics…

So, farewell it is to the City of Setagaya and all the good friends/colleagues we’ve met on our recent Rice adventures in Tokyo. Particular thanks to our performer-translators KAKUMOTO Atsushi and Sumida San, to director Masayoshi, to Akahisa/Kana/Romi and the technical crew for ensuring the smooth-running of the show and ultimately what might pass for the swiftest get-out in Rice Show history. The locals (this means anyone who can get home in less than 2 hours) gave generously of their time to help us navigate through the beguiling intensity of Tokyo life; showing us fine restaurants with extraordinary edibles. For our final evening in Tokyo, Craig and I travelled to the Tama Art University with producer/lecturer OKUYAMA Midori where we instructed her students in the art of ‘getting away with doing what you love doing’. Then it was back to everybody’s favourite meeting place, the dog Hachiko, in Shibuya, followed by more fanciful foods including chewy fish gills on tofu and pop-on-the-tongue delicacy sea grapes. Tokyo is rammed full of eating houses, often tucked away in alleys or basements and sadly I think I’d struggle to re-find any of the brilliant places we were taken to.

The remaining hours were spent drinking with the Blue Man team and it gets a bit hazy in the memory…we didn’t do Karaoke nor did I get to bed before it was time for the airport pick-up. Trying to use a long-haul flight as recovery time is never a good idea, as I’ve previously found to my detriment… but there was time for another treat in store. At the Gate I bumped into old friend Nigel Cliffe, on his way home with the Royal Opera House after a 3-week stint in Tokyo. Nige was part of team for the original production of Vesalius – a Requiem (1996-8) and also sang basso in solitary (1998-9). If I was mindful of the cost and practicalities of transporting Stan’s Cafe to Tokyo, I needn’t have been so worried. The ROH had a team of 250 people out there! So many, infact, that they couldn’t get them all on one plane (…or maybe that’s for reasons of insurance).

It seems Japan has a great appetite for British Culture and the Arts is a succesful export to that land. The youth culture clearly references a British equivalent with freeform borrowing and re-invention. I was amazed at the number of Union Flag images that were displayed – on clothing, bags, posters – but moreover, impressed with the way the Japanese have adopted it as a design motif and have riffed on it. Maybe it’s because the liberal culturati back home tend to reject the vocabulary of nationalism these days or maybe it’s because Britpop and Punk still hold their currency amongst the Japanese youth, long after it has waned back home? I looked for similar takes on the Stars & Stripes but found none.

A second observation on the visual culture of the streets in Japan concerns the prevalence of small furry cartoon creatures, often of indistinct species. Images of baby pets are everywhere. They’re on adverts, on public information notices, on lamp-posts, on ticket machines. As you enter the subway at Shibuya you hear a recording of birdsong. You see cutely dressed miniature dogs being wheeled around in specially designed buggies. You see shops selling dog and cat outfits – dog scarves, dog dresses, even dog lingerie!

Japanese life may be highly ordered – some might say repressed – but I was struck with how safe it feels there. Amidst the busyness and mayhem there is a peacefulness. Nothing threatening or edgy to my mind. The only words of anger I heard turned out to be a European couple having an argument (in English, of course) on the street. So, the correlation I’m trying to draw here is this; pervasive imagery of soft, cute, furry creature makes for peaceful, calm persons.

Charlotte and I pounded the superheated streets from the Tsukiji Fish Market, through Ginza, past the Imperial Palace to the Diet (Parliament) Building, where we encountered about 8 police riot buses parked up. Each of them had a notice fixed to the passenger entrance – replete with cute furry animal.

I may have to give the Pokemon phenomenon a second glance after all, if only to see if it sheds some light on this theory.

If I travel to a new City I find the best way of understand it is by getting out of it in order to revisit it. Getting out of Tokyo was nigh impossible as it seems to extend endlessly in all directions (including re-claimed land in the sea). Nonetheless I will attempt a leftfield response under the persona of Harry Juku, Taste of Tokyo – a contribution to ARC’s Bawdyville next weds – which I’ll be performing with Kindle Emily.

For now, though, I am in Orleans, France – driving to the Domaine d’O, Montpellier with The Black Maze. A bientot, mon Blog.

For a city that doesn’t seem to have iconic buildings to distinguish it, Tokyo is….well, unmistakable.

Its mysteries are slowly unravelling themselves to us, as we prepare for tomorrow’s opening of Of All The People In All The World at the Setagaya Arts Theatre. Link to further images of the show and Stan’s Cafe downtime.