Category / Barbican

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Barbikane

Tangerine Dream: Zeitraffer (Barbican Music Library, 16 January-2 May 2020)
Trevor Paglen: From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’ (The Curve, Barbican, 26 Sep 2019—Sun 16 Feb 2020)

BoardSo, the Barbican – aka the alcohol-free concert hall – was heaving and so the slightly complicated but with good sight lines for a rendezvous foyer turned out not to be a smart move. Especially when Dennis was playing havoc with the trains. But that didn’t dissuade the thousands of people who had descended for a wellness fête (and who were queueing in their hundreds for the ladies loos hidden in the bowels of the building).
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The Art of 2019 — Part One

I started, as so often I do, with keeping a list of consumed culture. This petered out, so I am relying on memory.

2019 was Van Gogh and Rembrandt and Schiele and Munch.

Every year should be Munch year.
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Apocalypse for Strings

Jóhann Jóhannsson, Last and First Men (Barbican, LSO conducted by Daníel Bjarnason, 1 December 2018)

47216604_10161364073755284_4300837936473047040_nAs black and white footage of concrete construction unfolds on a screen through the mirk of dry ice, I think of Goran Stefanovski, who I so wish I talk to about this – this is film of the former Yugoslavia, it may or may not be Macedonia, and I have no idea if these are ruins or sculptures or… He would have loved the conversation. The cinematographer was Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, who worked on the one-take Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015), but Jóhannsson directed it.
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Meh Fetishism

Seeing three exhibitions in one day was a mistake, but two were about to end and the third was next door to the first so I booked slots for Their Mortal Remains and Into the Unknown and shouted at the Science Museum website for not having the complete list of tickets. I allowed about two hours for the first — not enough as it happens — and booked at five for the the Barbican, which would give me an hour to do Robots and an hour to get across London.

I reckoned without the Victoria and Albert Museum’s crappy signage — it would be helpful to know the toilet is on a staircase and not easier accessed — and the Science Museum’s layout — the main lifts are out of action and you have to navigate around the block from lift B to the exhibition (not that lift B is obviously signed from what I assume are Lifts A and none of them have labels).

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