A few months ago a 19-year old boy was sitting outside a dentist in Brixton waiting for his girlfriend. Whilst she was being prescribed treatment for a sore tooth, he was in a state of relief of his own.
“I quit last night,“ he said after a short preamble.
“Quit, what?” I asked, handing over my lighter.
“Weatherspoons.”
In a time when everyone is expected to be grateful for a job I wondered why he saw this as a good move.
“The paid staff just stood around as I was forced to do all the worst jobs in the bar. All the time.”
These were his typical duties from day one, Neville explained. For the mature and well-mannered man the final straw came next.
“I soon figured that one bonus of the bar was that I could get tips. So I worked extra hard, flirting with the girls, making the men feel big, just so I could take home something at the end of the night.”
His charm worked. One punter was so impressed by his service that he handed over a five pound note as a show of gratitude. Neville had cracked it. Or at least he thought he had. Suddenly the bar manager jumped in and grabbed the money before Neville could pocket it.
“I was accused of stealing, and even though the guy who gave me the tip backed me up I was told I was on my final warning. So I thought fuck it and walked out.”
Neville has few material possessions. He shows enormous support for his girlfriend, whose depression came about shortly after losing her job, and the couple share a single bed in a hostel. He said, “I don’t have much but the last thing I’ll lose is my self respect.”
Historically, unpaid work experience has been the stuff of the well-off members of middle classdom. Roles created by ‘dad’s mate’ in fashion (or media, or politics, or banking) were routes in for young people who didn’t really mind what they did so long as it was the ‘right kind of job’. Companies didn’t pay out money for this job because it was all based on a favour in the first place. Nick Clegg has admitted this was how he got his first job in banking, and in countless other professions free labour is still the standard first step on the ladder.
However, beyond having good connections, kids from families with links into these single-class jobs had their bank accounts bolstered by family money at the same time. For young people spending their days doing menial tasks in this situation it didn’t matter if they got paid or not because they still received pocket money.
But this privilage isn’t available for young people from working class backgrounds. In the past, work, of any sort, was work for one reason: it paid, and necessarily so. What’s more, the incentive to work harder in skilled jobs was there because it led to more work, a better reputation and then more money. Cities like Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield were build on this model, and communties in towns like Oswestry, Halifax, Bury and Congleton relied on it.
This still happens. But there are two problems today: Firstly, there aren’t as many local jobs as there used to be and until the government figures out how to create more jobs (I suggest embracing the UK’s sustainable energy potential to create an estimated 1m industrial jobs) work that creates output and can therefore be paid for will continue to dwindle in numbers. Secondly, and more recently, for many young people work has become a route out of a life that otherwise involves crime.
The workfare scheme is a 21st century culture clash. The privilaged elite are forcing their own understanding of getting into work upon the working class. Government has asked its friend Big Business to do it a favour and give its ‘children’ something to do. As long as young people stay in the role and out of the NEET figures they’re happy.
However in this scenario the jobs that unpaid workers are doing are needed, and as Jon Harris points out in a recent article, their profit margins are widening too. Meanwhile, for Neville, who doesn’t drink, learning how to poor pints isn’t what he wants for his CV.
“What will you do for cash now?” I ask.
“What every other kid in the hood does,” he answers. “Shot [sell cannabis] again.”
Many young people, just like anyone else, see unpaid unskilled work as disrespectful. It disempowers an already alienated generation even more. Whilst poor treatment of staff in the workplace is common anyway, without drugery being in exchange of money there’s no incentive to put up with it.
Neville, who had to take a short break from his job in Weatherspoons to bury his grandmother in Jamaica told a relative there of his situation back home. “My uncle said sounds more like slavery than work to me.” His girlfriend emerged from the dentist. “And what do you think?” I asked. He sighed and then walked away.
Monday 27 February 2012
Monday 3 October 2011
Monday 7 March 2011
Wednesday 19 January 2011
EMA
he Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Simon Hughes will find himself being reversed into a corner today when members of parliament vote on whether the government needs rethink its decision to scrap Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMA).
In contrast to promises made by both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats before the election, EMA, the grant that gives 48% of all 16- to 18-year-olds get for staying on at school or college, is due to be scrapped at the end of this academic year.
However, as student protests against the government’s action on education continue across London today, all eyes in Westminster will be on Mr Hughes.
The Lib Dem Deputy spent the week in his capacity as the Government’s advocate for further and higher education consulting the shadow education minister Andy Burnham who has drafted today’s motion.
Mr Burnham, who will lead today’s debate alongside Labour Leader Ed Miliband said, “The language used in the motion has been very carefully worded.”
To quote the motion, Labour are, “…calling on the Government to rethink its decision on EMA, retaining practical support to improve access to, interest in and participation in further and higher education.”
This is a pragmatic piece of paraphrasing by Labour since Mr Hughes was quoted in the Times Educational Supplement last weekend as saying, “I've never abstained in my life before the tuition fees debate. If what Labour is saying is a call for the Government to rethink its plans, I will support that."
Labour will be urging as many Liberal Democrats as possible to vote against the government today, however, if such a senior member of the coalition as Mr Hughes joins the opposition in the vote fresh strains will be imposed on the coalition.
Mr Burnham said, “Both Michael Gove and David Cameron specifically promised to keep EMA before the election therefore their plans are a total renege on their commitments.
“The debate today will ask ministers how long do they really want to carry on being lied to?”
But he was keen to stress that this is not about playing party political games: “This is about having something of value for young people in Britain.”
Mr Burnham said, “My conversations with Hughes this week have been very constructive and I really believe that he understands the importance of EMA.”
When asked whether he think Hughes will vote in favour of Labour’s motion Burnham said he couldn’t be sure.
But he added, “Since 3400 young people are in receipt of EMA in Mr Hughes’ constituency of Bermondsey, he’s definitely got cause for concern. About 70% of students at Southwark College get EMA and he’ll soon feel the political effects if he goes back on his words.”
In contrast to promises made by both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats before the election, EMA, the grant that gives 48% of all 16- to 18-year-olds get for staying on at school or college, is due to be scrapped at the end of this academic year.
However, as student protests against the government’s action on education continue across London today, all eyes in Westminster will be on Mr Hughes.
The Lib Dem Deputy spent the week in his capacity as the Government’s advocate for further and higher education consulting the shadow education minister Andy Burnham who has drafted today’s motion.
Mr Burnham, who will lead today’s debate alongside Labour Leader Ed Miliband said, “The language used in the motion has been very carefully worded.”
To quote the motion, Labour are, “…calling on the Government to rethink its decision on EMA, retaining practical support to improve access to, interest in and participation in further and higher education.”
This is a pragmatic piece of paraphrasing by Labour since Mr Hughes was quoted in the Times Educational Supplement last weekend as saying, “I've never abstained in my life before the tuition fees debate. If what Labour is saying is a call for the Government to rethink its plans, I will support that."
Labour will be urging as many Liberal Democrats as possible to vote against the government today, however, if such a senior member of the coalition as Mr Hughes joins the opposition in the vote fresh strains will be imposed on the coalition.
Mr Burnham said, “Both Michael Gove and David Cameron specifically promised to keep EMA before the election therefore their plans are a total renege on their commitments.
“The debate today will ask ministers how long do they really want to carry on being lied to?”
But he was keen to stress that this is not about playing party political games: “This is about having something of value for young people in Britain.”
Mr Burnham said, “My conversations with Hughes this week have been very constructive and I really believe that he understands the importance of EMA.”
When asked whether he think Hughes will vote in favour of Labour’s motion Burnham said he couldn’t be sure.
But he added, “Since 3400 young people are in receipt of EMA in Mr Hughes’ constituency of Bermondsey, he’s definitely got cause for concern. About 70% of students at Southwark College get EMA and he’ll soon feel the political effects if he goes back on his words.”
Monday 29 November 2010
Monday 15 November 2010
Friday 12 November 2010
Sick Of Hearing Otherwise :: SOHO
“Pound a bowl, pound a bowl”, they snarl. All nicey nicey on the face of it, until you drop a pear or query the price or you don’t cough up for the doctor’s orders.
Berwick street market, its bullies armed only with a Cockney accent to scare off the prevailing gentrification. Not that this is to be unexpected.
Overhead willowy women sag their hair and limbs from the windows and holla down for some mackeral.
The traders hurl one up along with that peach which has been dropped on the floor. Romance isn’t dead, as we’re told, it’s just a little less appealing to the desperados who write the script.
Hailing requests gives the girls something more fun to do than wait for the group of Asian boys cajole a member of their clan to jump up to jannah.
Onlookers think they’re getting a glimpse of an underbelly with scenes like this but it’s literally only the tits of the fuck. Titilations to underpin soho’s reputation.
Soho. Where cash is king. An island of idiocy. With its various industries and its pissed-on’s firing us on all cylinders into a soggyfuture. Soho. A vestige of unscrupulous selfishness.
‘Pound a bowl, pound a bowl of 12 avocados that anywhere else in the world cost 50p each, we can sell you 12 for a pound.’ What’s that? ‘Sample Our Hass Oranges.’ That shit doesn’t even exist, but they might as well since the business you see in front of you is just a set of smoke screens as well.
But what’s there instead? Contrabanding. It first became clear to me when I asked one trader how he was doing on the market, since I was looking to set up a stall of my own. ‘Oh I’m losing 4 grand a week since them road works have been going on.’ He said, pointing down the street to the builders.
4 grand a week? I thought this couldn’t be possible. That’s about 48 thousand less avocados being sold each week. How is he still living let alone having the time to chat to me speculatively? Speculate all he might but them avos wont sell themselves.
Westminster Council have been promising to develop Berwick street – home to London’s oldest market - for a decade now. As we chat I sense Tracey the woman at the council whose job it is to develop markets in the borough peering down from her paper tower. Maybe she’s heard us chatting and is as alarmed as I am.
But no, she’s just checking to see that noones upsetting da piss. She sits atop her mountain of adminitration and sips tea all day long. That’s when she’s not holidaying in Jamaica. Large as life and formal as ever she’ll talk to you in a language of professionalism and distanced promise. She’s also developed a knack for leafing through the application forms that her very existence is built on in a way that allows her to stay as far removed as possible from the realities of life on the ground.
Lest us not forget, that if she were to do any of said paper admin she’d have less of a tower to perch on. Hell, to do that she might as well set fire to it at the bottom.
So she sips her tea and chews buttered toast. And when she gets that weird butt ache resultant of sitting down for too long she gets up and takes a champagne shower.
She stands there, transixed and admiring her feet. The champagne is being spilt from the jowls of the major above her. He and his business buddies float in a cloud of hot air above their admin towers and admire the view.
What if he knew about all the under the counter crap that goes on in Soho? Who we kidding, he already does, and sleeps at night chanting the Tory mantra of “No intervention, no intervention”, a populist gambit that might as well be illustrated with a sketch of 100 big businessmen huddled over him playing soggy biscuit where he plays the hobnob himself. (As opposed to the realities of its misdirection and malfunction.)
The irony of it all is that the Berwick street traders –who aren’t to blame and actually serve a great product on all fronts – are likely the richest members of the Soho society. And it’s beautiful. They’re working-their bollocks off in the cold street-class and serve the working class people who enhabit the towers blocks dotted about the place.
Meanwhile, this satisfies the middle-class adgame sweetcorn children and the old sunbed prunes who like a ‘bit of rough’.
But to make us believe they’re skint whilst sitting on heaps of cash would be a lie. Their toothless ugliness is deceiving.
Nope, Soho is a weird one. The real poor sods of soho are those very sweetcorns themselves. Working for a green giant maybe but he doesn’t pass the peas onto them.
Wander up onto Broadwick street and be placed in the epicentre of this giant superficiality. It looks busy for sure, and Christ there must be about 231 vans pumps padding around the place (the extra 1 accounts for that guy whose wearing it as a necklace).
(NB: the uniform varies, if it aint Vans it's Nike hightops or white tees for real Gs. Thug life it aint. Tug life or even mug life maybe and all the Big L you listen to wont change it.)
The only synonymous fact about Soho and hiphop is that the average tourist could be forgiven for thinking these guys are doing well for themselves. In reality, this tawdry glitter allows the world here to subsist how it does - unchanged and merciless.
Ha, little do these onlookers know that it’s actually mummy and daddy sweetcorn keeping the wolf from the door. In actual fact the working class of today are now the only earning class around. To be middle class and cutesy with a pair of skinny jeans and a bellend to show through them means working unpaid and for less dignity.
But then again they can afford to do it and even better they don’t have to really lift a finger to earn a notch on their cv either (just stuff envelopes and buy the bigger bastards pump polish and canalin).
These guys have been sold a con by the very conartists they slave for. You’ll catch a glimpse of this tribe whilst they’re taking a break from their Shit Office Hanging Out to buy a latte frap-pot from the Kiwi’s who set up coffee shop on every corner of london.
(In fact there’s so many of said cafes now it’s a wonder why people still need to queue for 20 minutes to labour over one espresso. It’s all part of the LIEstyle.)
And afterwards they totter back through the streets of hallowed old soho, it’s skin tattooed by the pricks who walk across the surface.
Carving canyons in the concrete, or so they believe, is another lifeform here. The couriers. Bike messengers are in abundance and add another layer of - mainly mindlessness – but also attraction to Soho’s arena.
I once worked as one and did as long as stint on the ‘circuit’ – as they call it – as financially possible. Or perhaps it was my frame of mind that made me quit?
This frantic clan have their own uniform. Usually dressed in black, for practical reason’s we’d have led you to believe, with a giant shoulder bag to carry a even bigger chip in it.
The chip gets heavier the longer you’re in the job but whilst it remains bareable will afford couriers a greater access to the inner sanctum of soho than any other job.
Swooping in and out of offices all day on a bamboo shoot of deluded grandeur, messengers enact childish fantasies as tarzan, spinderman, batman or some sort of street pirate, delivering their goods with maverick intent.
But the dream is short lived since most of the day will be spent waiting for the next job – especially these days since unpaid work experience people in offices deliver any W1 W1 drop offs. You’ll be able to admire this flock of messengers in their aviary towers at number of local locatrions:
The corner of poland st and broadwick
Opposite the end of carnaby street on great marlborough
The gardens on whitfield st
And sometimes soho square (but these will usually be new guys)
Here they perch sanctimoniouly, discussing a variety of revolution-urgh(?)-ry stuff: From houses to squat, the news, the results of some courier sporting event the weekend before and most likely their state of impoverishment and why it’s the fault of the bourgeouisie.
As much as they love to hate the environment they work in the job of the courier is pretty much the same as that of any company they deliver for. Passing on messages that are packaged in a way that makes gthe recipient feel they’re important.
Still it’s worth adding that the work was hard and rewarding. The educated portion of courier litter quite enjoy the drudgery for its Orwellian nature and it makes them feel quite working class in what’s the only class-less profession I’ve ever experienced. A good graft.
Another thing about the couriers that’s worth mentioning is they add a few more species into the overwhelming race of rat that dominates soho.
Given London is one of the most multiculutural cities in the world you’d be pushed to find a whiter enclave than soho.
In fact, any black presence in soho is lauded over by the blank canvas, who feel reasured by its company since it puts them in touch with the urban culture they so desperately seek to appropriate.
You turn the corner onto Beak street. One cant help wonder if all the Chlamydia and shit spilling out from the minds and mounds of the workers is airborne. Does it mix with other STDs (Soho transmitted diseases) that already exist in the atmosphere and flow through the street like a contagion on contemporary culture.
Maybe, or more likely this is just culture itself – burning like a never-ending cigarette being pulled on by the very cancer it creates.
Some of the smoke plombs out of places like the Gaucho or other members clubs where the inherited editors and artheritic critics share allergic acerbic attitudes. Some Old Helpless Oaf talks about the good old days. Maybe it’s the ghost of Karl Marx returing to his Dean Street haunts. But minus the groupies this lot have packed pockets. They have nothing to do with the ins and outs of life here instead drawn here like it’s a magnet to malignant melanomas.
Follow the wafts of hot carcenogen passed the popular as ever Pulpo where there’s more people ordering to queue, then passed the bottom of Carnaby street.
Ahead there’s a gap in the fog and just when you’re about to pass out you gasp for air and all of a sudden Regents St catches you.
Safe Out Here One might think…
SOHO
Berwick street market, its bullies armed only with a Cockney accent to scare off the prevailing gentrification. Not that this is to be unexpected.
Overhead willowy women sag their hair and limbs from the windows and holla down for some mackeral.
The traders hurl one up along with that peach which has been dropped on the floor. Romance isn’t dead, as we’re told, it’s just a little less appealing to the desperados who write the script.
Hailing requests gives the girls something more fun to do than wait for the group of Asian boys cajole a member of their clan to jump up to jannah.
Onlookers think they’re getting a glimpse of an underbelly with scenes like this but it’s literally only the tits of the fuck. Titilations to underpin soho’s reputation.
Soho. Where cash is king. An island of idiocy. With its various industries and its pissed-on’s firing us on all cylinders into a soggyfuture. Soho. A vestige of unscrupulous selfishness.
‘Pound a bowl, pound a bowl of 12 avocados that anywhere else in the world cost 50p each, we can sell you 12 for a pound.’ What’s that? ‘Sample Our Hass Oranges.’ That shit doesn’t even exist, but they might as well since the business you see in front of you is just a set of smoke screens as well.
But what’s there instead? Contrabanding. It first became clear to me when I asked one trader how he was doing on the market, since I was looking to set up a stall of my own. ‘Oh I’m losing 4 grand a week since them road works have been going on.’ He said, pointing down the street to the builders.
4 grand a week? I thought this couldn’t be possible. That’s about 48 thousand less avocados being sold each week. How is he still living let alone having the time to chat to me speculatively? Speculate all he might but them avos wont sell themselves.
Westminster Council have been promising to develop Berwick street – home to London’s oldest market - for a decade now. As we chat I sense Tracey the woman at the council whose job it is to develop markets in the borough peering down from her paper tower. Maybe she’s heard us chatting and is as alarmed as I am.
But no, she’s just checking to see that noones upsetting da piss. She sits atop her mountain of adminitration and sips tea all day long. That’s when she’s not holidaying in Jamaica. Large as life and formal as ever she’ll talk to you in a language of professionalism and distanced promise. She’s also developed a knack for leafing through the application forms that her very existence is built on in a way that allows her to stay as far removed as possible from the realities of life on the ground.
Lest us not forget, that if she were to do any of said paper admin she’d have less of a tower to perch on. Hell, to do that she might as well set fire to it at the bottom.
So she sips her tea and chews buttered toast. And when she gets that weird butt ache resultant of sitting down for too long she gets up and takes a champagne shower.
She stands there, transixed and admiring her feet. The champagne is being spilt from the jowls of the major above her. He and his business buddies float in a cloud of hot air above their admin towers and admire the view.
What if he knew about all the under the counter crap that goes on in Soho? Who we kidding, he already does, and sleeps at night chanting the Tory mantra of “No intervention, no intervention”, a populist gambit that might as well be illustrated with a sketch of 100 big businessmen huddled over him playing soggy biscuit where he plays the hobnob himself. (As opposed to the realities of its misdirection and malfunction.)
The irony of it all is that the Berwick street traders –who aren’t to blame and actually serve a great product on all fronts – are likely the richest members of the Soho society. And it’s beautiful. They’re working-their bollocks off in the cold street-class and serve the working class people who enhabit the towers blocks dotted about the place.
Meanwhile, this satisfies the middle-class adgame sweetcorn children and the old sunbed prunes who like a ‘bit of rough’.
But to make us believe they’re skint whilst sitting on heaps of cash would be a lie. Their toothless ugliness is deceiving.
Nope, Soho is a weird one. The real poor sods of soho are those very sweetcorns themselves. Working for a green giant maybe but he doesn’t pass the peas onto them.
Wander up onto Broadwick street and be placed in the epicentre of this giant superficiality. It looks busy for sure, and Christ there must be about 231 vans pumps padding around the place (the extra 1 accounts for that guy whose wearing it as a necklace).
(NB: the uniform varies, if it aint Vans it's Nike hightops or white tees for real Gs. Thug life it aint. Tug life or even mug life maybe and all the Big L you listen to wont change it.)
The only synonymous fact about Soho and hiphop is that the average tourist could be forgiven for thinking these guys are doing well for themselves. In reality, this tawdry glitter allows the world here to subsist how it does - unchanged and merciless.
Ha, little do these onlookers know that it’s actually mummy and daddy sweetcorn keeping the wolf from the door. In actual fact the working class of today are now the only earning class around. To be middle class and cutesy with a pair of skinny jeans and a bellend to show through them means working unpaid and for less dignity.
But then again they can afford to do it and even better they don’t have to really lift a finger to earn a notch on their cv either (just stuff envelopes and buy the bigger bastards pump polish and canalin).
These guys have been sold a con by the very conartists they slave for. You’ll catch a glimpse of this tribe whilst they’re taking a break from their Shit Office Hanging Out to buy a latte frap-pot from the Kiwi’s who set up coffee shop on every corner of london.
(In fact there’s so many of said cafes now it’s a wonder why people still need to queue for 20 minutes to labour over one espresso. It’s all part of the LIEstyle.)
And afterwards they totter back through the streets of hallowed old soho, it’s skin tattooed by the pricks who walk across the surface.
Carving canyons in the concrete, or so they believe, is another lifeform here. The couriers. Bike messengers are in abundance and add another layer of - mainly mindlessness – but also attraction to Soho’s arena.
I once worked as one and did as long as stint on the ‘circuit’ – as they call it – as financially possible. Or perhaps it was my frame of mind that made me quit?
This frantic clan have their own uniform. Usually dressed in black, for practical reason’s we’d have led you to believe, with a giant shoulder bag to carry a even bigger chip in it.
The chip gets heavier the longer you’re in the job but whilst it remains bareable will afford couriers a greater access to the inner sanctum of soho than any other job.
Swooping in and out of offices all day on a bamboo shoot of deluded grandeur, messengers enact childish fantasies as tarzan, spinderman, batman or some sort of street pirate, delivering their goods with maverick intent.
But the dream is short lived since most of the day will be spent waiting for the next job – especially these days since unpaid work experience people in offices deliver any W1 W1 drop offs. You’ll be able to admire this flock of messengers in their aviary towers at number of local locatrions:
The corner of poland st and broadwick
Opposite the end of carnaby street on great marlborough
The gardens on whitfield st
And sometimes soho square (but these will usually be new guys)
Here they perch sanctimoniouly, discussing a variety of revolution-urgh(?)-ry stuff: From houses to squat, the news, the results of some courier sporting event the weekend before and most likely their state of impoverishment and why it’s the fault of the bourgeouisie.
As much as they love to hate the environment they work in the job of the courier is pretty much the same as that of any company they deliver for. Passing on messages that are packaged in a way that makes gthe recipient feel they’re important.
Still it’s worth adding that the work was hard and rewarding. The educated portion of courier litter quite enjoy the drudgery for its Orwellian nature and it makes them feel quite working class in what’s the only class-less profession I’ve ever experienced. A good graft.
Another thing about the couriers that’s worth mentioning is they add a few more species into the overwhelming race of rat that dominates soho.
Given London is one of the most multiculutural cities in the world you’d be pushed to find a whiter enclave than soho.
In fact, any black presence in soho is lauded over by the blank canvas, who feel reasured by its company since it puts them in touch with the urban culture they so desperately seek to appropriate.
You turn the corner onto Beak street. One cant help wonder if all the Chlamydia and shit spilling out from the minds and mounds of the workers is airborne. Does it mix with other STDs (Soho transmitted diseases) that already exist in the atmosphere and flow through the street like a contagion on contemporary culture.
Maybe, or more likely this is just culture itself – burning like a never-ending cigarette being pulled on by the very cancer it creates.
Some of the smoke plombs out of places like the Gaucho or other members clubs where the inherited editors and artheritic critics share allergic acerbic attitudes. Some Old Helpless Oaf talks about the good old days. Maybe it’s the ghost of Karl Marx returing to his Dean Street haunts. But minus the groupies this lot have packed pockets. They have nothing to do with the ins and outs of life here instead drawn here like it’s a magnet to malignant melanomas.
Follow the wafts of hot carcenogen passed the popular as ever Pulpo where there’s more people ordering to queue, then passed the bottom of Carnaby street.
Ahead there’s a gap in the fog and just when you’re about to pass out you gasp for air and all of a sudden Regents St catches you.
Safe Out Here One might think…
SOHO
Tuesday 19 October 2010
Tuesday 15 June 2010
Label Of Love
Published on Guardian Online
25 Years Into The Future: Happy Birthday Techno
Detroit based record label Metroplex is celebrated its 25th anniversary this month at the city’s annual electronic music festival Movement. Over 60,000 fans paid tribute to the label’s founder Juan Atkins - along with techno godfathers Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson – at their special birthday stage.
“I never intended it to be as big as it turned out to be,” admits Juan. “I just started it to release my own music as Model 500 after Cybotron had ended. I’d sent my first release - No UFOs - to some major record companies but they all turned it down. I had a real belief in this new sound and setting up Metroplex was the only way to get it out there.”
By 1985, Juan had been conducting electronic experiments for five years. He moved to Belleville, a leafy suburban town on the outskirts of Detorit, at the age of 11 and having played bass guitar in garage bands whilst living in the city began toying around with a Korg MS10 synthesiser that his grandma had bought him. His new isolated surroundings made it more convenient for him to make music alone and Juan spent endless days in his bedroom experimenting with its capabilities - rudimentary tests and trials that laid the foundations for techno.
At around the same time Atkins met Rik Davis, a Vietnam veteran who’d developed an interest in electronic music whilst serving in the army. They shared sounds with each other and soon became bandmates in the group Cybotron. “There was definitely something that made us click together,” believes Juan. “We talked lots about Toffler’s idea of the Third Wave and developed what you might call a techno speak dictionary. In this dictionary were a lot of words like metroplex and cybotron. That’s where these names came from.
“Metroplex is short for Metrocomplex which was a future word that Alvin Toffler spoke about. It referred to his scenarios in Future Shock and Third Wave about how cities over the world would grow so big that they would all become one. This was a Metrocomplex.”
For Juan, soundtracking the future was where his own destiny lay. Cybotron split when Rik’s interest in guitars and rock music and Juan’s commitment to technology pulled the pair apart. Metroplex dedicated itself more to an electro sound. Akins released his next two tracks as Model 500 - Night Drive (Thru Babylon) and Technicolor – which gave way to a 4x4 beat count. Clearly Atkins' future meant dance music.
By this stage Atkins had recruited childhood friend Derrick May to help distribute Metroplex releases, but before the pair could get to work they first of all they had to iron out one disagreement: A compilation that would introduce the UK to this new Detroit sound was due for release. Derrick wanted to call it ‘high-tech soul’ but Juan was insistent that it should be called ‘techno’. Forget Motown, Techno City – the name of a 1984 Cybotron track - was Detroit’s new identity.
According to Atkins the label has gone through various metamorphoses over the last 25 years. “Changes started to happen when a west-coast company Macola took over our catalogue. They pushed the music to an American market. When Derrick and I were working on the distribution our focus was very much on a European market, as well as Detroit. I was very influenced by Kraftwerk and electro had already hit that part of the world.”
Juan moved out of Belleville and back to Detroit city after graduating high school. He doesn’t deny that the city has influenced his music. “It’s not just the artists or the music here but the whole atmosphere. There’s just something about this city that affects you in a certain way. It has a specific flavour."
Detroit city has changed a lot over the years and many people define it these days as a place in decay. “But that’s the beauty of it,” believes Atkins. “It’s not like a major metropolitan city; it’s not shiny and new. It’s decaying like an ancient city in Europe. In the ruins you can see the oldness, mixed with the new. Detroit is an industrial city. It was one of the cities the forefront of the industrial revolution. In front of your eyes is end of the industrial revolution mixing with the start of the technological revolution. It’s a very unique flavour.”
Just as Motown defined Detroit during an industrial era, Techno redefined it once more. According to Atkins, it’s set to do so again. “We’re now in the Third Wave. I strongly believe that Detroit will be seen as one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world in the near future. Something big is about to happen that will affect everyone, not just artists.”
Luckily for Metroplex’s stock-in-trade, there’s a future still waiting to happen and Aktin's wants to soundtrack it. “I’m about to give some stuff that’ll reflect what I’ve always done and that’s make things that’ll last 25 more years.”
Whilst Detroit’s status as a shrinking city might be the antithesis to the future predicted by Toffler and his followers techno’s global success has proven that some kind of world unity was waiting to happen.
Techno’s five track trajectory
Kraftwerk – Tanzmusik (1973)
Detroit absorbed the sound of German electronic music. Derrick May famously set this connection in stone: “The music [techno] is like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator.”
Parliament-Funkadelic – One Nation Under A Groove (1978)
George Clinton’s Midwestern electronic funk group influenced a great shift in dance music in the early 1980s and spawned a genre that became known as “electro”.
Cybotron – Clear (1983)
Cybotron’s biggest hit, a real fusion of electronic experimentation and funky dance music that proved electronic music soul had soul.
Model 500 – Play It Cool (1986)
After Cybotron left the game, Atkins brought back the 4x4 beat in a series of electro tracks released by Metroplex.
Eddie ‘Flashin’ Fowlkes – Goodbye Kiss (1987)
Known as Metroplex’s first proper “techno” success.
Ben Ferguson has contributed to a book of interviews with DJs who have shaped the history of music. The Record Players is available to buy at http://www.djhistory.com/
25 Years Into The Future: Happy Birthday Techno
Detroit based record label Metroplex is celebrated its 25th anniversary this month at the city’s annual electronic music festival Movement. Over 60,000 fans paid tribute to the label’s founder Juan Atkins - along with techno godfathers Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson – at their special birthday stage.
“I never intended it to be as big as it turned out to be,” admits Juan. “I just started it to release my own music as Model 500 after Cybotron had ended. I’d sent my first release - No UFOs - to some major record companies but they all turned it down. I had a real belief in this new sound and setting up Metroplex was the only way to get it out there.”
By 1985, Juan had been conducting electronic experiments for five years. He moved to Belleville, a leafy suburban town on the outskirts of Detorit, at the age of 11 and having played bass guitar in garage bands whilst living in the city began toying around with a Korg MS10 synthesiser that his grandma had bought him. His new isolated surroundings made it more convenient for him to make music alone and Juan spent endless days in his bedroom experimenting with its capabilities - rudimentary tests and trials that laid the foundations for techno.
At around the same time Atkins met Rik Davis, a Vietnam veteran who’d developed an interest in electronic music whilst serving in the army. They shared sounds with each other and soon became bandmates in the group Cybotron. “There was definitely something that made us click together,” believes Juan. “We talked lots about Toffler’s idea of the Third Wave and developed what you might call a techno speak dictionary. In this dictionary were a lot of words like metroplex and cybotron. That’s where these names came from.
“Metroplex is short for Metrocomplex which was a future word that Alvin Toffler spoke about. It referred to his scenarios in Future Shock and Third Wave about how cities over the world would grow so big that they would all become one. This was a Metrocomplex.”
For Juan, soundtracking the future was where his own destiny lay. Cybotron split when Rik’s interest in guitars and rock music and Juan’s commitment to technology pulled the pair apart. Metroplex dedicated itself more to an electro sound. Akins released his next two tracks as Model 500 - Night Drive (Thru Babylon) and Technicolor – which gave way to a 4x4 beat count. Clearly Atkins' future meant dance music.
By this stage Atkins had recruited childhood friend Derrick May to help distribute Metroplex releases, but before the pair could get to work they first of all they had to iron out one disagreement: A compilation that would introduce the UK to this new Detroit sound was due for release. Derrick wanted to call it ‘high-tech soul’ but Juan was insistent that it should be called ‘techno’. Forget Motown, Techno City – the name of a 1984 Cybotron track - was Detroit’s new identity.
According to Atkins the label has gone through various metamorphoses over the last 25 years. “Changes started to happen when a west-coast company Macola took over our catalogue. They pushed the music to an American market. When Derrick and I were working on the distribution our focus was very much on a European market, as well as Detroit. I was very influenced by Kraftwerk and electro had already hit that part of the world.”
Juan moved out of Belleville and back to Detroit city after graduating high school. He doesn’t deny that the city has influenced his music. “It’s not just the artists or the music here but the whole atmosphere. There’s just something about this city that affects you in a certain way. It has a specific flavour."
Detroit city has changed a lot over the years and many people define it these days as a place in decay. “But that’s the beauty of it,” believes Atkins. “It’s not like a major metropolitan city; it’s not shiny and new. It’s decaying like an ancient city in Europe. In the ruins you can see the oldness, mixed with the new. Detroit is an industrial city. It was one of the cities the forefront of the industrial revolution. In front of your eyes is end of the industrial revolution mixing with the start of the technological revolution. It’s a very unique flavour.”
Just as Motown defined Detroit during an industrial era, Techno redefined it once more. According to Atkins, it’s set to do so again. “We’re now in the Third Wave. I strongly believe that Detroit will be seen as one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world in the near future. Something big is about to happen that will affect everyone, not just artists.”
Luckily for Metroplex’s stock-in-trade, there’s a future still waiting to happen and Aktin's wants to soundtrack it. “I’m about to give some stuff that’ll reflect what I’ve always done and that’s make things that’ll last 25 more years.”
Whilst Detroit’s status as a shrinking city might be the antithesis to the future predicted by Toffler and his followers techno’s global success has proven that some kind of world unity was waiting to happen.
Techno’s five track trajectory
Kraftwerk – Tanzmusik (1973)
Detroit absorbed the sound of German electronic music. Derrick May famously set this connection in stone: “The music [techno] is like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator.”
Parliament-Funkadelic – One Nation Under A Groove (1978)
George Clinton’s Midwestern electronic funk group influenced a great shift in dance music in the early 1980s and spawned a genre that became known as “electro”.
Cybotron – Clear (1983)
Cybotron’s biggest hit, a real fusion of electronic experimentation and funky dance music that proved electronic music soul had soul.
Model 500 – Play It Cool (1986)
After Cybotron left the game, Atkins brought back the 4x4 beat in a series of electro tracks released by Metroplex.
Eddie ‘Flashin’ Fowlkes – Goodbye Kiss (1987)
Known as Metroplex’s first proper “techno” success.
Ben Ferguson has contributed to a book of interviews with DJs who have shaped the history of music. The Record Players is available to buy at http://www.djhistory.com/
Sunday 30 May 2010
On the brink of the brain, ideas that never made it out of the mouth
Today I remembered an idea that came to mind whilst i stayed in Paris last year. It was mustered up whilst lying on the floor of my one bedroom apartment near Belleville. Crippled with the agony of a kidney infection, homebound thanks to the ceaseless sense that i had to piss every two minutes.
Anyway, like everyone else in this world (apart from the doers in life) there's probably a whole heap of grandiose ideas hidden somewhere in my head. This was the only one that's made it further than my mind (though still nowhere close to becoming an reality)
Anyway, like everyone else in this world (apart from the doers in life) there's probably a whole heap of grandiose ideas hidden somewhere in my head. This was the only one that's made it further than my mind (though still nowhere close to becoming an reality)
Thursday 1 April 2010
A force for good
Been writing about UK defence policy all week. It seems each party has a different view of what 'a force for good' is. Here's mine...
Tuesday 9 March 2010
Wednesday 17 February 2010
Steve Reich
Steve Reich gave a lecture today at the Red Bull Music Academy. His well-rehearsed tales had were punctuated by a set of musical morsels which left the audience entranced. Acting as the luddite, the 74 year old explained how resistant he was to technical innovation - abandoning phasing for live composition. "I wanted to be the second tape," he exclaimed.
His staunch rejection of computer composing was remarkably well received by a room filled with laptop producers who've spent their lives beating off in their own bedrooms. As a tribute here's Enfant (Chants) by Ricardo Villalobos.
Wednesday 10 February 2010
Noah Davis
Featured in Dazed and Confused
Artist Noah Davis is in good company where he lives and paints in LA. Skate art hero Ed Templeton, who Noah admits has been influential to his style, is represented by the same gallery – Roberts & Tilton. Hot summers hang off Noah’s canvases – they could just as easily be set in Louisiana as LA, the 1950s or today. But, the absence of time and place makes room for colour in his works.
The 26 year old from Seattle attended the Cooper School of Art in New York. After graduating he stayed in NYC to hang out with graffiti kids. This style never truly appealed to him and Davis soon became disillusioned with the wider forms of art making. In response to this he moved to the West Coast to begin an administrative job in public arts.
Many ’83 babies claim they’re a special bunch and Davis is no different. Exposed to a set of new cultures whilst growing up, feeding off the referential trends in music and art that defined the nineties Davis’ curiosity for culture opened doors upon various different histories. Whilst working in the famous LA art bookstore – Moca – Noah fed off the access to art history the job gave him and whilst working as a colourist for Stones Throw Records designer Parra it wasn’t long before he found himself in a position where he wanted to paint again. This time he was equipped with a knowledge of the past and a nudge from new friends like Dash Snow and Ed Templeton.
Recently Noah’s work was shown at Art Basel in Miami ’09. His paintings featured amongst the Rubell Family Collection exhibition, Black Artists but this is not how Davis would like to be defined. Whilst being black clearly influences his work he insists it’s not about race, tempting the question, is he the first artist of an Obama era America?
ND Race plays a role in as far as my figures are black. The paintings aren’t political at all though. If I’m making any statement it’s to just show black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it. You rarely see black people represented independent of the civil rights issues or social problems that go on in the States. I’m looking to move on from that stage, we can’t keep tying our culture to a movement that happened two generations ago.
BF Has America reached a post-racial stage – one that everyone billed Obama would herald?
ND I know I’m going to live to regret saying this but yes. I know there are neighbourhoods in LA and surely in London where these scenarios are an everyday thing. But luckily for me that’s not the case so I don’t think my pictures have the right to discuss this. Their responsibility is to represent the people around me. They’re my reference point but they’re not the point I’m trying to make.
BF Many people expect artists to represent big moral issues. This is sometimes an unfortunate responsibility.
ND My paintings just have a very personal relationship with the figures in them. They’re about the people around me. I want people to read them like this whilst taking a meaning of their own from each work. What’s around me is all I’ve got, we have to look to our experiences as tools of education. My first paintings were dealt with political issues but they were silly and out of my depth.
BF So when was the turning point?
ND I did a work called American Sterile. It was really influenced by things Ed Templeton had done. On the one hand it’s a rejection against the nude but the reality of it was that the work came more from my own static creativity. I wasn’t even going to show it, and then someone from the gallery where I had my first show came over and saw it. He loved it, which was funny because I was actually really close to painting over it. I would have but I’d got to the point where I’d run out of shit to paint.
The Mountain School in downtown LA helped me out massively when I came to LA. Eric Wesley and Piero run it from a little room in the back of a bar. Students were taken on tours of artists’ studios during the two classes a week and I found it to be a really inspiring place, it’s uniquely LA. Then I guess it was Dash Snow who really encouraged me by making me quit me job.
BF So you knew the late anartist?
ND Yes. He was on fire. I kept telling him how good he was but he was so humble. Although he had lots of people around him who tried to tag along for the ride, they probably contributed to his death as much as he did. I don’t think he had any idea of his talent and although he received heavy criticism I think everyone was jealous of him.
BF American Sterile is quite like a Larry Clark photo.
ND Ha, that’s an honour. I love him. I think all of our childhoods were slightly based around Kids. Even though I wasn’t a skater that movie set the scene for what you thought life should be about.
BF Minus the AIDS Telly was our hero and Kids was a guiding light. Perhaps it would have been better without the big issues though.
ND Right, I still hang out with some of the guys who were in the film. Their careers took off after that movie but unfortunately the not so nice aspects to Clark’s films were a reality for some of them and are they’re gone now. I guess Dash falls into that bracket too.
BF What influences you now?
ND I think a lot about German painters, Neil Rausch and Daniel Richter, and those guys from the Leipzig School. From Britain Peter Doig, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud created their own language for their work. Henry Taylor too. He couldn’t give away a painting for a while, even though now he sells for Saatchi. Race wasn’t an issue for him, black people were just around. He’s a real painter; he stuck with it even during those times. I always ask myself if I’d have that kind of commitment. I think the dream for any artist is to create a world in which you can express your own ideas. Dash managed to achieve this language too.
BF I agree, his work is automatic, it boasts the raw talent that defined Beautiful Losers.
ND Right, there’s a voyeurism in his work that makes you want to be there. Like in Francis Bacon’s work. He wasn’t technically the best painter but his talent lay in the use of colour. His strokes created worlds of his own.
BF Do you collect images like he did?
ND Whilst I worked in an art bookstore Moca I felt like I had every image ever made at my fingertips. I studied them, looked images upon images and thought, “What do I need to do to stand out.” If you don’t study the trends, and I don’t mean trends in a bad way, trends are always a thing to study because they’re always trying to get ahead of you.
BF It’s interesting that you have this relationship with trends yet you practice an old trade.
ND I just love it. Painting does something to your soul that nothing else can. It’s visceral and immediate and is always readdressed in new ways that keep it relevant. Whilst I was in New York I became jaded and I only wanted to see drawings. Now I think it’s very important that art remains to be about ideas but it shouldn’t be an either or battle between concepts versus painting. They can exist together. I guess when my school forced fed us a conceptual education I reacted against it. I left school because it wasn’t teaching me anything. Art students are missing out on a certain amount of training whilst they obsess about their ideas, but at 18 what are they based on? Someone sold a pair of socks at Frieze this year but soon they’ll find they can’t do this anymore and be stuffed. I don’t care about how much my art sells for. I think people with money dictate the art world too much, at both ends of the spectrum, even the ones who create work as a reaction to that fact.
BF Is that why you just go with what you know?
ND Absolutely
Chris Ofili, Tate Britain
(Featured on www.dazeddigital.com)
Where the work of Chris Ofili was once all about shit, dicks, pussy and tits now he paints bottoms, bosoms, hips and lips. Come shots have become waterfalls, giant muffs have turned into tree blossom. The mid-career retrospective of one of Britain’s greatest living painters goes on show at Tate Britain today.
If simplistic conclusions like this could be made it’s due to the traditional chronological way that Tate Britain has curated this show. Samples sliced from black culture and 90s current affairs that comprise Ofili’s early painting are less apparent in the layered but laid back stuff of late. In fact the overall effect is rather like listening to the entire Wu Tang discography - whose millennium material marks their retreat from da clan in the front. Messages make way for method; potency is replaced by production.
As any music fan knows, hip-hop had a golden age and Ofili – whose work in rooted in hip-hop culture – did too. For Ofili this was 1998, the year he won the Turner Prize (and incidentally Lewis Parker released Masquerades and Silhouettes). The exhibition’s first three rooms straddle this period. Classics that made him controversial, cutting and current such as 7 Bitches Tossing Their Pussies Before the Divine Dung (1995) and No Woman, No Cry (1997) greet you at the entrance to the gallery but ring in your mind from then on.
Visitors are led into The Upper Room (1999-2002), a walnut womb of 14 paintings built by RCA architect David Adjaye. During a solitary time in Ofili’s career this mid-point in the show mimics the psychological sentiment of an artist who at this stage became sick of fame and attention. And out of this he appears reborn and colour replaces cuttings from now on.
The colours of the Pan-African flag – black, red and green – create his work between 2002 and 2003. They bring to mind album covers like Tribe’s A Low End Theory and Roy Ayer’s Ubiquity. What’s more, they mark the moment when Ofili’s attention shifts away from the UK. Whereas references to Stephen Lawrence’s murder were local, these colours are part of an international culture and his move to Trinidad in 2005 was imminent.
Not long after his relocation Ofili paints only in shades of blue (not the Madlib record). Whether blue was the new black or because in Trinidad his skin colour was no longer in the minority Ofili was a responding to his new surroundings. Again his creativity seems inspired from his senses – accurate works from acute impressions.
Ofili claims that his new work that hangs in the final room represents life in Trinidad. Calm curves, and warm colours create a serene scene at first. But look a little closer and beneath the simple image of yellow blossom that cascades down a black background, The Healer (2008), hides a creature that devours on this colourful juice. The poui flowers, native to Trinidad, last only for one day. In Ofili’s eyes their beauty is stalked by a sinister stranger - perhaps equivilent to an insatiably hungry media from which his sought freedom in Trinidad.
Such subtle references take the place of frenetic cut-outs, jolted jizz marks and snatched-at samples that made his earlier work so urgent. The surfaces of his recent images are fecund and fertile. With less fight Ofili’s work has grown up. That’s not to suggest that he’s retreated into the earthy tones of ‘world music’ or any kind of painterly equivalent - The Healer, with all its resolve, is still exciting and it’s hard to ignore the sex it implies.
But for fans of him, and of hip-hop, it’s good that he’s moved on. The urgency of his earlier work did its job, broke down the same barriers that hip-hop beat against and now Ofili and his contemporaries across the globe can relax, fathers in a field that is still so respected today.
Tuesday 22 December 2009
::22 12 09::
NGOs and civil society groups have accused Denmark of obstructing the democratic process after nearly 2000 people were arrested in Copenhagen during the UN climate summit.
An official letter of complaint will be written to the Danish Police and the UN after the “outrageous way that Denmark prevented people from exercising their democratic right to protest," said Kirsty Wright, Senior Campaigns officer for the World Development Movement.
Friend’s of the Earth, the World Development Movement and the Jubilee Debt Campaign will use the pattern of mass arrests during the summit as well as raids on parties and activist sleeping quarters and the arrests of high-profile spokesmen and women as examples of the divisive tactics used by police to disrupt the organisation of demonstrations.
Their frustration comes after the UK Ambassador for Denmark Riis Jergensen wrote to a group of NGOs ahead of the COP15. He ensured the group that a revision to Danish laws to give police the power to arrest people who they thought might provoke violence would not infringe upon people's "legal right to protest peacefully” in Denmark. Yesterday Mr Jergensen reiterated that, “Events during the last fortnight do not contradict my statement. Police solved the tremendous challenge very professionally."
Jonathan Stevenson, Campaigns Officer for the Jubilee Debt Campaign, believes, “Denmark wanted to avoid the embarrassment of protest playing a central role in the summit. Their efforts went so far that now the embarrassment has swung in the opposite direction. We will investigate police behaviour fully to ensure that the outlawing of public participation will ever happen again."
Saturday 19 December 2009
::19 12 09::
It had become almost routine when police decided that once again the peaceful protest outside the Bella Centre last Wednesday was immediately illegal. As they drew their batons and lay blows to the shoulders of unshielded activists the crowd had learnt after a week of similar encounters that linking arms was their only hope. Pepper spray was landed in the eyes of a 68-year-old Dutch woman and the chain broke when her husband and son ran to her rescue. As a similar fate met individuals who crossed the canal on an inflatable raft any sort of People’s Assembly clearly had to happen outside the centre’s grounds.
Two things wont be the same again after over 50000 activists came to Copenhagen for the UN conference on climate change: the ability to demonstrate against the state in Denmark and the shape of environmental activism to come.
For many, the purpose of the COP15 was to create a global environment movement that would continue to push for fair and sustainable solutions to climate change for the global south after this conference had ended. As news of the accord filters through the absence of such a deal means that a lot of fighting lies ahead. However, from now campaigners will feel an international family supports their efforts, thanks to the two weeks that grassroots organisations have spent learning from each other.
Now, delegates and demonstrators wait at plane and train stations for a ride home, ironically their journeys are being delayed by an extreme turn of cold weather. For activists, the new sense of collectively found here will feel warming. However, they leave behind them a debris of legal litter will make protesting in Denmark even harder.
The illiberal stance taken by police towards protesting made this occasion remarkable. The Danish government hurried through laws ahead of the conference that gave police powers of preventative arrest. Like a bull in a china shop, their powers were used to smash demonstrations and soon the temporary warehouse-prisons in the south of the city became full. Amnesty International have called for an independent investigation into the 1989 people who were arrested but not charged during the conference and other NGOs are writing letters of complaint to the Danish government.
Police led a persistent campaign to keep activist groups on edge. They targeted people who they thought were influential in the non-hierarchical activist network Climate Justice Action (CJA), and invaded activist parties with teargas and dogs ahead of Reclaim Power day last Wednesday.
Despite this, activists continued to show their strength to demonstrate in the face of demonization. Neither temperatures of minus 5 or the tight cage of police riots vans froze the day into a pathetic fallacy. Reclaim Power day was deemed a success by organisers.
The Dutch woman regained her vision again and said, “My family came here because this situation is too important to ignore. Copenhagen has started a new era for environmental activism.” The spray had left her with a white mask around her eyes. “Come on, it’s just a bit of pepper,” the seasoned campaigner said. For others, Copenhagen would have been their first taste of such encounters. They will take a lot of away from the last two weeks as their attention turns towards Mexico next year.
Thursday 17 December 2009
::16 12 09::
Danish authorities say that three years preparation has gone into policing the activism around the UN climate conference in Copenhagen. As demonstrators travel from all over the world to participate in Reclaim Power day today they say the illiberal stance police have taken against protesting has not put them off, despite 1500 people having already been arrested.
This figure continued to rise yetsterday as Tadzio Mueller, a spokesman for the organisers of today's event, Climate Justice Action (CJA), was arrested by plainclothes police as he left the Bella centre. He will be charged in court today. A police spokesman said, “We are charging him under sections 119 and 134 which involve violence against police and inciting unrest in the city.”
Jonny Lunberg, from Copenhagen police, said, We have tried to keep a good dialogue between NGOs and ourselves and hoped that no arrests would be made during the conference.” 194 people were released at 6am yesterday morning and activists were recovering after a night in which teargas and molotov cocktails were used in clashes with police in the Christiania area of Copenhagen. Climate Justice Action (CJA) were hosting a meeting to discuss today’s event and Naomi Klein was speaking. The riots happened after an otherwise peaceful day of protesting.
The trouble began at 11pm when police entered Christiania, an autonomous neighborhood in Copenhagen where families live. After a young group of people set fire to barricades that blocked the entrance to the neighborhood, Henrik Suhr of Copenhagen Police said, “We entered Christiania as a preventative measure so things wouldn’t get out of hand.”
However, eyewitnesses report that police were already within Christiania before there was any fire. “It was really frightening”,
said one resident who wanted to remain anonymous, “Police were chasing everyone through the streets and forcing their heads into the ground before tying their hands behind their backs. I didn’t know what was happening but ran a fast as I could to my house.”
The meeting had taken place in Woodstock bar and people began dancing and drinking afterwards. Another witness said, “It was really surreal. All of a sudden there were bangs. I looked outside and saw people being arrested whilst everyone inside was having a great time. Then police came in and made everyone sit on the ground.”
Amy Jacobs had left the party with a friend and her three-month-old baby. “I heard bangs and explosions but we kept calm inside. The police banged on the door and even though we explained 'We've got a
baby in here' they just smashed the windows before breaking down the door and coming in. It was as if they were looking for someone"
Ed Thomson of CJA agreed, “The way people were acting it was like they were on the hunt. All the Danish people who were arrested have been kept in detention until January. “ A police spokesperson responded to the accusation that they were looking for specific people by saying, “We wanted to arrest people who we identified as being troublemakers. We had police buses waiting in the area because we knew that was where activists went to after the protest during the day.”
Police have received over 200 official complaints over the treatment of people in Copenhagen and Amnesty International has called of an immediate investigation into the legitimacy of the many arrests. “When nearly 1,000 people are arrested and then all but 13 are released it means that many of those people were just innocent people,” said Ida Thuesen, of Amnesty International Denmark.
Olly Stubbs, a graffiti writer from London, was arrested on Friday for wearing a scarf whilst walking towards a demonstration. He described the detention centre as, “freezing, especially because they don’t let you wear any shoes. A group in the pen next to me were sprayed with teargas after they brought their benches together.” Police confirmed that pepper spray was used during this incident.
The police have been following activist forums and websites ahead of today’s protest. Jonny Lunberg said, “We have allowed the demonstration to happen as you have the right to protest in Denmark and we have agreed that the march will only be aloud to a designated field where the Bella Centre can be seen.”
Ed Thompson of CJA said, “There’s a widespread feeling that people have tried to avoid getting arrested before today. It’s the big one, it’s the most important one of the lot and hopefully police incitement won’t result in people just throwing bricks and bombs. It would totally detract from the aim of the day, to create a people’s assembly.”
Delegates from Latin America are expected to participate in the people’s assembly today. This is due to take place at the gates of the Bella Centre but Mr Lunberg warned, “It will not happen there. I know we will be successful in halting the demonstration at the field and any event will happen at the field.”
This figure continued to rise yetsterday as Tadzio Mueller, a spokesman for the organisers of today's event, Climate Justice Action (CJA), was arrested by plainclothes police as he left the Bella centre. He will be charged in court today. A police spokesman said, “We are charging him under sections 119 and 134 which involve violence against police and inciting unrest in the city.”
Jonny Lunberg, from Copenhagen police, said, We have tried to keep a good dialogue between NGOs and ourselves and hoped that no arrests would be made during the conference.” 194 people were released at 6am yesterday morning and activists were recovering after a night in which teargas and molotov cocktails were used in clashes with police in the Christiania area of Copenhagen. Climate Justice Action (CJA) were hosting a meeting to discuss today’s event and Naomi Klein was speaking. The riots happened after an otherwise peaceful day of protesting.
The trouble began at 11pm when police entered Christiania, an autonomous neighborhood in Copenhagen where families live. After a young group of people set fire to barricades that blocked the entrance to the neighborhood, Henrik Suhr of Copenhagen Police said, “We entered Christiania as a preventative measure so things wouldn’t get out of hand.”
However, eyewitnesses report that police were already within Christiania before there was any fire. “It was really frightening”,
said one resident who wanted to remain anonymous, “Police were chasing everyone through the streets and forcing their heads into the ground before tying their hands behind their backs. I didn’t know what was happening but ran a fast as I could to my house.”
The meeting had taken place in Woodstock bar and people began dancing and drinking afterwards. Another witness said, “It was really surreal. All of a sudden there were bangs. I looked outside and saw people being arrested whilst everyone inside was having a great time. Then police came in and made everyone sit on the ground.”
Amy Jacobs had left the party with a friend and her three-month-old baby. “I heard bangs and explosions but we kept calm inside. The police banged on the door and even though we explained 'We've got a
baby in here' they just smashed the windows before breaking down the door and coming in. It was as if they were looking for someone"
Ed Thomson of CJA agreed, “The way people were acting it was like they were on the hunt. All the Danish people who were arrested have been kept in detention until January. “ A police spokesperson responded to the accusation that they were looking for specific people by saying, “We wanted to arrest people who we identified as being troublemakers. We had police buses waiting in the area because we knew that was where activists went to after the protest during the day.”
Police have received over 200 official complaints over the treatment of people in Copenhagen and Amnesty International has called of an immediate investigation into the legitimacy of the many arrests. “When nearly 1,000 people are arrested and then all but 13 are released it means that many of those people were just innocent people,” said Ida Thuesen, of Amnesty International Denmark.
Olly Stubbs, a graffiti writer from London, was arrested on Friday for wearing a scarf whilst walking towards a demonstration. He described the detention centre as, “freezing, especially because they don’t let you wear any shoes. A group in the pen next to me were sprayed with teargas after they brought their benches together.” Police confirmed that pepper spray was used during this incident.
The police have been following activist forums and websites ahead of today’s protest. Jonny Lunberg said, “We have allowed the demonstration to happen as you have the right to protest in Denmark and we have agreed that the march will only be aloud to a designated field where the Bella Centre can be seen.”
Ed Thompson of CJA said, “There’s a widespread feeling that people have tried to avoid getting arrested before today. It’s the big one, it’s the most important one of the lot and hopefully police incitement won’t result in people just throwing bricks and bombs. It would totally detract from the aim of the day, to create a people’s assembly.”
Delegates from Latin America are expected to participate in the people’s assembly today. This is due to take place at the gates of the Bella Centre but Mr Lunberg warned, “It will not happen there. I know we will be successful in halting the demonstration at the field and any event will happen at the field.”
Sunday 13 December 2009
::13 12 09::
Frontline, Princess Nyah style
Police arrested hundreds more people in Copenhagen yesterday during aweekend in which even peaceful protest seems to be unacceptable during the UN conference.
Buses arrived to remove 256 people from the scene when police halted the demonstration after having gained information from indymedia.com that activists were planning to force themselves into a locked part of the harbour to stop production. A police spokesperson, Flemming Munch, announced, ‘We decided to set up a search block and stop everyone who was in the march. Initially we had a good dialogue and said if we found nothing on people we would let them through but a lot of them
wouldn’t cooperate and then it became an aggressive situation so we used force and arrested everyone.’
The protest, Hit the Production, began at Triangen in the Osterbro area of Copenhagen. Kate Cuthbert, said, ‘We’re hitting the harbour because shipping is a perfect example of how our whole economic system is responsible for climate change.’ Organisers say 500 people began to walk towards the harbour but after 100 meters police had surrounded
the group on all sides. By the time it had reached Oslo Plads they were met my riot vans, dogs and a wall of armoured officers and immediately detained in a controversial kettling tactic.
Karen Davidson, from the civil rights group, Parents Against Police Brutality, said, ‘The force used here was completely disproportionate to the level that was needed. People who didn’t want to be searched were immediately pushed to the ground. Soon, the police had surrounded everyone and began placing them in plastic hand ties.’
Henrik Ama was one of the initial few to get away. He said, ‘Only six of us were let through before police became violent. They smashed the window of a car that was travelling with us and took gasmasks and bolt-cutters from it. They have my bag still but it only has a sandwich in.’
Munch said, ‘We saw that there was gasmasks and equipment to break into a locked part of the harbour so decided to take action.’ However, when The Independent pressed to find out how these tools were spotted,
Munch said this was classified police information.
Meanwhile, members from the German environmental group, Robin Wood, who scale buildings to hang banners, were hauled over a bridge by police and bundled into riot vans. Daniel Hafner escaped arrest because he had a press card. He said, ‘Our message said simply, Pay Climate Debt, but within 10 seconds police grabbed the ropes and yanked the climbers back up.’
Throughout the day police helicopters continued to hover over Copenhagen whilst riot vans sped sporadically through the streets. Whilst new laws were passed ahead of the conference that allow police to detain people for 12 hours without cause, the Danish public believe that their illiberal powers are a result of rioting between the police and youths in 2006.
Organisers of today’s event were part of the activist network Climate Justice Action (CJA). For police and protestors the focus is now on Reclaim Power day this Wednesday when activists will try to enter the Bella Centre to create a 'people’s forum'. After 968 people were arrested on Saturday after the same preventative measures were used CJA is encouraging people not to be put off by the inevitability of arrest. ‘This is a historic moment and police should know that nothing they do will deter us from what we’ve come here to demonstrate.’
Police arrested hundreds more people in Copenhagen yesterday during aweekend in which even peaceful protest seems to be unacceptable during the UN conference.
Buses arrived to remove 256 people from the scene when police halted the demonstration after having gained information from indymedia.com that activists were planning to force themselves into a locked part of the harbour to stop production. A police spokesperson, Flemming Munch, announced, ‘We decided to set up a search block and stop everyone who was in the march. Initially we had a good dialogue and said if we found nothing on people we would let them through but a lot of them
wouldn’t cooperate and then it became an aggressive situation so we used force and arrested everyone.’
The protest, Hit the Production, began at Triangen in the Osterbro area of Copenhagen. Kate Cuthbert, said, ‘We’re hitting the harbour because shipping is a perfect example of how our whole economic system is responsible for climate change.’ Organisers say 500 people began to walk towards the harbour but after 100 meters police had surrounded
the group on all sides. By the time it had reached Oslo Plads they were met my riot vans, dogs and a wall of armoured officers and immediately detained in a controversial kettling tactic.
Karen Davidson, from the civil rights group, Parents Against Police Brutality, said, ‘The force used here was completely disproportionate to the level that was needed. People who didn’t want to be searched were immediately pushed to the ground. Soon, the police had surrounded everyone and began placing them in plastic hand ties.’
Henrik Ama was one of the initial few to get away. He said, ‘Only six of us were let through before police became violent. They smashed the window of a car that was travelling with us and took gasmasks and bolt-cutters from it. They have my bag still but it only has a sandwich in.’
Munch said, ‘We saw that there was gasmasks and equipment to break into a locked part of the harbour so decided to take action.’ However, when The Independent pressed to find out how these tools were spotted,
Munch said this was classified police information.
Meanwhile, members from the German environmental group, Robin Wood, who scale buildings to hang banners, were hauled over a bridge by police and bundled into riot vans. Daniel Hafner escaped arrest because he had a press card. He said, ‘Our message said simply, Pay Climate Debt, but within 10 seconds police grabbed the ropes and yanked the climbers back up.’
Throughout the day police helicopters continued to hover over Copenhagen whilst riot vans sped sporadically through the streets. Whilst new laws were passed ahead of the conference that allow police to detain people for 12 hours without cause, the Danish public believe that their illiberal powers are a result of rioting between the police and youths in 2006.
Organisers of today’s event were part of the activist network Climate Justice Action (CJA). For police and protestors the focus is now on Reclaim Power day this Wednesday when activists will try to enter the Bella Centre to create a 'people’s forum'. After 968 people were arrested on Saturday after the same preventative measures were used CJA is encouraging people not to be put off by the inevitability of arrest. ‘This is a historic moment and police should know that nothing they do will deter us from what we’ve come here to demonstrate.’
Saturday 12 December 2009
::12 12 09::
2006 was a brave year for youths in Copenhagen. After the city mayor chose to evict the cultural youth house, Ungondshuset, protests were enacted on the streets for a year afterwards. Since then, youths and police have been pitted against one another in a battle that's altered laws and protests today.
Earlier tonight, a police spokesperson announced at 7.30pm that a group of 700 people had been arrested after a window at the Danish Foreign Ministry was smashed and fireworks had been let off. News reports run this a their line tomorrow and police have successfully detracted from the fact that the day had otherwise been a success, for peaceful protest and the environment movement as a whole as 100000 took to the streets to show their support for the action on climate justice.
Arrests were made on Amagerbrogade (street name) soon after the largest environmental gathering in history, The Flood, organised by Friend's of the Earth, left its halfway point in Parliament Square in Copenhagen. Once the march past Torvegade bridge and enter the Christiania district of Copenhagen Police employed a controversial tactic known as kettling to sever a group of 700 from the back of the demonstration. A police spokesperson said that this was because a number of people in the crowd had masks on.
There was no violence at this stage and a police spokesperson admitted this group were unprovoked. Protestors report the mood being 'happy' and 'like a carnival' when a group of 50 police entered from the back of the group, forcing a number of protests to sit down whilst cornering another group and picking out the masked few. The police spokesperson reiterated that in Denmark it is illegal to cover your face during a protest under new laws past ahead of the COP15 and that police have the right to disrupt any form of protest.
After detaining the group of 700 for 5 hours public buses arrived to take them to a temporary compound facility on the outskirts of the city.
Thursday 10 December 2009
::11 12 09::
Music is the highest form of art…Hegel
In fact, it keeps proving itself to be the highest form of anything (although maybe not food, despite Shakespeare’s early efforts to tie the two together, if music be the food of love, play on).
Tomorrow will host the first major action to take place in Copenhagen during the COP15. Demonstrators have called the day Our Climate Not Your Business and will focus their direct action on highlighting the fact that corporations have no role to play in democracy. Expect action against typical victims of anti-capitalist attention such as McDonalds, C&A, Microsoft and Netto.
In praise of these activists they tend to practice what they preach and take pleasure in abstaining from these corporate demons. Their action thus is an effort to persuade others to adopt a similar way of life to the ones they lead. However, for all their effort, their performance becomes immediately fetishised by mass media and their lifestyles remain in the margins.
But how to get around this? Only music has the answer.
Similar to anti-capitalist rhetoric, music has its own range of lifestyles and cultures. It possesses a mainstream and has ‘alternative’ styles as well. However, where music differs from political activism is in the way it’s peripheral forms work as a virus, encircling the mainstream and infecting it from the outside in. In this sense, activism would do well to observe this phenomenon.
Musical subcultures in urban environments often emerge from neighbourhoods that require urgency from the art produced there. Examples of this include baile funk, kwaito, reggaeton and grime. Max Ingram has termed these Shanty House, ‘a new strain of post World Music. However, the purpose of this term is to avoid these strains of global urban music being considered an extension of World Music…a concept inextricably intertwined with concepts of the earthen and the rooted.’
However, political activism with environmental connections seems unable to disconnect itself from the same brush that brands World Music. For the mainstream it appears, as Ingram says, earthen and rooted and thus not as good as what they’ve got already.
So it needs a makeover. Shanty House represents the same DIY approach to culture production as many grassroots movements who will battle over the next week. And like Shanty House, their offering is better and more sustainable than what the money hungry makers of the mainstream offer. Thus, eco-political activism needs to model its approach on the stuff that has made Shanty House an appealing form to appropriate.
For starters activism could mimic the egalitarian nature of music. Welcome newcomers, seek to teach rather than preach and most of all learn the importance of being NOT SO earnest.
Whether you like it or not, subcultures in music are much more effective at changing the mainstream than any political action group. It needs to locate itself as the starting line for people before they ‘career’ into life, rather than the corner people go to when they fall out with life. This could be done promoting its benefits: free food, skill sharing, community. Having got people at the source, tributaries such as eco activism would run into a river that could then start to shape the geography around it.
Tuesday 8 December 2009
::08 12 09::
There are a number of great things about this news story but I think the best is the empirical proof it provides that Australian's take wanking and thus being wankers to another level.
In other news, UK firms Easyjet and BP have been named worst ‘greenwashers’ by Consumer International in their annual Bad Companies Award. Hopenhagen gives other multinationals the chance jump on the COP15 bandwagon by adorning every flat surface in town with brand logos.
Greenwashing, the practice of companies who market themselves as environmentally friendly, has become a topic of hot discussion in Copenhagen. Rasmus Kjeldahl, Head of Consumers International and Director of the Danish Consumer Council, described greenwashing as businesses’ efforts to ride on the back of environmental concern and spin their products as environmentally friendly. ‘They mislead consumers.’
Easyjet is accused of greenwashing for using misleading information on its website that states it is more environmentally friendly to fly with them than drive a Toyota Prius. Another winner, BP, have attempted to garner an image of being environmentally friendly by committing to alternatives to fossil fuels. But, since launching an alternative fuels campaign in 2005, BP has cut their carbon reduction research budget from $1.5Bn in 2008 to $500m in 2009. However, Robert Wine, of BP said that they would still spend $8Bn before 2020.
Greenwashing masquerades as activism in central Copenhagen during the conference. Not surprisingly, ‘activist’, or rather advertist movement Hopenhagen is sponsored by Coke, Gap and BMW. It has a massive visual presence in the city. This is not surprising as it describes itself as a ‘movement generated by the International Advertising Association.’
Naomi Klein said, ‘The COP15 and the many surrounding events have become branding extravaganzas. There’s a huge globe in the city centre with a Siemens logo on and [Hopenhagen] is sponsored by Coke. That is a capitalization of hope.’ Coca-Cola is also accused of greenwashing by Comsumer International for promoting a range of plastic bottles earlier this year that are made partially from plants. Kjeldahl pointed out that this would only account for 15% of their output.
This Friday international corporations arrive in Copenhagen to take part in the Business Day at the Bella Centre. Greenwashing will fuel a day of direct action by activists who will demonstrate against the ‘illegal’ role played by corporations in democracy under the title Our Climate is Not Your Business.
Bad Company Awards 2009 – the ‘Winners’
Audi – for suggesting its diesel cars are clean and green.
BP – for talking up its renewable ambitions, but investing next to nothing.
EasyJet – for claiming its planes are greener than a hybrid car.
Microsoft – for marketing Windows 7 as green whilst encouraging consumers to
buy new PCs.
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