The principle art of bureaucracy

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | March 31, 2010

In keeping with the ongoing purge of bureaucracy from my life I stumbled across a piece in The Economist from 19th November 1955 (don’t ask how these things happen). It’s a piece by a British naval historian called Northcote Parkinson. Its called Parkinsions Law. He formulated a mathematical equation proving that bureaucracies always grow by 6% annually irrespective of the amount of work needed to be done. He stated that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

So what does this mean? Well what he meant was that bureaucracies always grow and because managers wish to appear busy, they increase their workload by creating paper trails and rules, filling out evaluations and forms and of course filing. Then they hire more subordinates, who in turn require more managerial time for supervision. Moreover, many bureaucratic budgets rely on the “use it or lose it” principle, meaning the current year’s expenditure determines the following year’s budget. This provides a strong incentive to spend (even waste) as much money as possible to guarantee an ever-increasing budget. Parkinson’s views remain consistent with those of conflict theorists, who hold that bureaucratic growth serves only the managers, who in turn use their increasing power to control the workers. Below is the formula:

In any public administrative department not actually at war the staff increase may be expected to follow this formula:

Where k is the number of staff seeking promotion through the appointment of subordinates
p represents the difference between the ages of appointment and retirement
m is the number of man-hours devoted to answering minutes within the department
n is the number of effective units being administered.
Then x will be the number of new staff required each year.
Mathematicians will, of course, realise that to find the percentage increase they must multiply x by 100 and divide by the total of the previous year, thus:

where y represents the total original staff. And this figure will invariably prove to be between 5.17 per cent and 6.56 per cent, irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.

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The Madagascar Institute

roggernaut | Culture and politics | March 29, 2010

The Madagascar Institute is an art combine in Brooklyn, New York that specialises in large-scale sculptures and rides, live performances, and guerilla art events and is our culture blog website pick of the month

“The Madagascar Institute is a collective of these crazy people who make really cool things and pull off all these ambitious and imaginative ideas. They had a team in the condiment war that happened in Dumbo. It happened years ago and basically a handful of collectives decided to have a condiment war, which was basically just as it sounds. The weapons were condiments like ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and hot sauce… which turned out to be particularly devastating because it really stings in your eyes and it was just wrecking people. One team had dough bombs, which also worked pretty well. Teams built catapults and one team even built a tank, which was basically a hot dog cart with people on top of it. Afterward we all went swimming in the East River to clean up, which was pretty much as gross as it sounds.”

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Trashing culture

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | March 27, 2010

Right. It’s up. I’ve put up a new page in the blog. We’re moving on. In the right direction. What am I talking about? I’m talking about The Trash Culture Revue that we’re producing through mutantspace.com in June, in Cork, Ireland. New possibilities are gaining momentum, albeit slowly. It’s hard work. Constantly, consistently trying to push on, push forward, find gaps and spaces, squeezing in and making yourself heard amongst the clammer and white noise of cultural tourism, state organisations and established systems of production. But now we’ve found a gap, a chink of light and we intend on grabbing it, fighting for it. Never has it been more important to give makers, audiences, people an opportunity to see what can be done without. Without anything but will, energy and conviction.

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scratching and hustling

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | March 24, 2010

This week has seen another blow. Less money going around means scratching and hustling is getting harder, the shoulders heavier, the pocket lighter. Things are precarious, teetering on the edge and like many working in the arts the pressure is beating down, a force pushing hard, trying to squash me into the ground. Making a living in the arts, (and I’m not talking about those in salaried positions) is really difficult. It takes guts, effort, stubbornness and an innate contrariness to get up every morning and make work, make space, make time to think, create, reflect and play. To do it time and time again and say, “no, I’m not giving up”, “no, I’m not going to stop”,” I can’t”, “not for you, not for anybody”. And then there comes a point when you realise you can’t stop.

Sometimes I feel that art making/living is propelling me through my life, an outside force over which I have little control. Hurtling me through space while I spend my time hoping it’ll stop, I’ll stop – just for a minute to catch my breath, “please, please let me stop” – at a standstill. That would be nice. A standstill. Where I’d watch everything go by me. For a change. But no I can’t. You see that’s the problem, I want to affect change, I must, I want to jump in, I must, it’s a compulsion, I must say my piece, make my mark on it, feel present, in the moment for a moment.

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The Garden of Small Desires

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | March 20, 2010

A blackness has descended when there should only be light. No explanation. No rhyme nor reason. Just thick, heavy clouds, amassing, in ever increasing tones of grey. A cold wind is rising. It’s damp and creeps into every crease. I’m standing, stranded, rooted to the ground, awaiting my fate, not willing myself on to find shelter, warmth, love. It’s almost as if I’ve been expecting it as you would an old friend you’ve fallen out with walking through the door of your local pub. A person who carries with them tension, grief and pain but once they’ve left leave only space and boundless energy

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St. Patricks nostalgia for assassinations and cling film

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | March 17, 2010

It’s the night before Paddys Day, our National Holiday and this year I am finally free of it. In being so I’ve been sitting here thinking over the last 20 years, since 1990, when I first started my involvement in Patricks Day celebrations. Thinking about my past work and how much the nature of our national celebrations has changed, even in my lifetime. So much has changed.

In my 1st year of taking part in a St. Patricks Day parade myself and my art college friends, along with a remarkable tutor we had, (Martin Folan in case any of you might know him or of him) re-enacted the assassination of JFK in the Limerick St. Patricks Day Parade. We angle – grinded off the roof of an old car, painted the entire body of it in stars and stripes, dressed up two friends as Jackie O and JFK, put on trench coats and photocopied FBI ID cards and went for it. Needless to say the authorities prevented the shooting and JFK made it to the end of the street alive. The following year we wrapped ourselves up in blue cling film, sprayed slogans on our chests and pushed a massive, heavy, wooden horse down the street for no reason whatsoever other than we wanted to. We then parked it up by our favourite pub and hit the booze for the rest of the day.

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the artistic process of cultural production

roggernaut | All about mutantspace | March 13, 2010

We live in a world in which creativity is recognised only when it is productive. This notion of cultural production is explored by many modern cultural and political theorists (of which I know little of but will be learning more about when we start a new series of articles on the subject in next months issue) and although for some it is merely an academic theory for many it is a sorry fact of life. It is a damning indictment of the society we live in.

As creative beings; process, ideas, thought, observation, learning, development, filtering, examining, trial and error are all fundamental parts of making of a mark, a creative act. An act that is difficult to sustain over time, gets more difficult as you get older as it requires a phenomenal amount of energy. Energy to pick yourself up, time and time again, to stumble from one failure to another in the search of the perfect moment that can never come and you will never find. It is a vocation that takes a phenomenal will, a contrariness, an ego, an unwavering belief, an imperviousness and a knowing. For the reality is most people calculate worth by the product you produce and not the process that is your lifetime

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the new language of thinkers

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | March 9, 2010

In my last blog outing ‘The politics of an artistic process’ I went on a rant. A big one. And I was taken to task for it. Rightly so. There’s nothing worse than having to read or listen to someone spewing a barrage – as was noted; ’you also speak a lot without saying anything, where are your true convictions? What do you want to see or to say?’ I responded in as constructive a manner as was possible but to be honest I was sucker punched. The person who made the comment was absolutely right. I was too right. Too moralistic, too high handed. And it was all too easy, intellectually shallow. All fluff, no substance.

460 total views, 1 today

Scars of love

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | March 4, 2010

As I have said before one thing leads to an other….
In my last foray I met up with Sinead O Donnell see last column.
She invited me to go North in February to see, be part of, help with, a performance week she was curating with others in Belfast. There was to be a Canadian Performance artist one of whom was Paul Couillard. The various Performances, discussions, and collaborations were around the theme “Chaos” A Condition or place of great disorder and confusion and to be held/seen in Belfast’s Catalyst Art Centre, Black box, theatre space, and other Not for Profit Art Spaces.

“A unique Opportunity to observe and participate in new approaches that re consider the role of Performance Art in Belfast and Beyond.”

Continue reading »

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Memorable meals with aubergines

Joseph x | Recipes from a mutant kitchen | March 4, 2010

Do you have memories of any great meals eaten in the past and if so, have you ever tried to recreate them in your own kitchen? My answer to both these questions is, yes, but my attempts to reproduce that dish eaten, say on a foreign holiday, have invariably been unsuccessful and I never know why.

I recall, for example, a May evening when I was swept off my feet by a spaghetti alle vongole served to me in a trattoria on a Roman street. Try as I might, I have never been able to recreate that dish, as I remember it. You may argue that the difference really lies in the ambience, the noise of Rome, the smells of Italian food, the warmth of the summer air, the smooth service of that Italian waiter. Of course, I cannot reproduce the Roman backdrop in my small kitchen but I do have all the ingredients that delivered that dish to me, and logic suggests, does it not, that I should therefore be able to replicate it exactly, here in the West of Ireland? I shall continue trying.

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Cauliflower recipes

Giles Clark | Recipes from a mutant kitchen | March 4, 2010

Cauliflower is especially plentiful and delicious this time of year. It grows enclosed in its swirling green leaves – and so the head and its undeveloped flowers remain pale (unlike its tan sibling broccoli who grows up near naked). It’s rich in those classically autumnal tastes – milkyness and nuttiness – but is spearheaded by a sweetness which keeps it relevant through spring. If it’s overcooked on the boil or in the steamer though, the school-lunch bitter aromas become prevalent. The thick white stalks of the leaves – aka ‘poor man’s asparagus’ – can be boiled until tender and eaten straight away with melted butter, lemon and salt. Like all vegetables the flavour becomes flat with age (that is the stage before it starts to rot) so make sure it looks in fine fettle – springy, bright green leaves and an unblemished, radiant head.

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againstthegrain.org

roggernaut | Culture and politics | March 3, 2010

Against the Grain is our culture blog website pick of the month. It’s a radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters – political, economic, social and cultural – important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. We’re based at the studios of Pacifica station KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California.

421 total views, 1 today

Books on cultural theory, new social movements, sound art

roggernaut | Book reviews and writers | March 3, 2010

Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction by Ben Highmore

Ben Highmore traces the development of conceptions of everyday life, from Georg Simmel’s cultural sociology, through the Mass-Observation project of the thirties to theorists such as Michel Curteau.

‘Ben Highmore’s engaging and readable study of how modern and contemporary theorists have defined and examined everyday life provides a lens for students and scholars alike through which to examine a central issue in cultural studies and social thought.’

Ivan Karp, Emory University

‘Highmore has produced a valuable resource for teachers in all the disciplines that are concerned with the study of culture. He addresses the key thinkers who have defined the major variants of this crucial construct of cultural theory, and he has done so both accessibly and brilliantly.’

George Marcus, Rice University

954 total views, 2 today

In Valour

roggernaut | Everything about music | March 3, 2010

Once upon a time you would have expected band members to be at least in the same country in order to make music together. Now, thanks to modern technology, being 16,000km apart doesn’t hinder the creative process. Or at least this is what IN VALOUR have found. Indeed, the time difference has turned out to be an advantage for this musical duo – they enjoy waking up fresh to new music, lyrics or melody which the other band member has been puzzling over ‘til exhaustion. They can each work on certain elements of a track while the other is out cold to the world.

Valerie and howard first met in Sydney where they were members of trip-hop band ‘Kinetic’. Re-acquainted in Jan ’09 they thought they might work on a handful of tracks, but found that their musical connection was still alive and kicking. They took the name ‘IN VALOUR’, and forged their unique sound from a blend of cultures, styles, tastes and experience. They chose this name because it’s a constant reminder of where they want to be and the crest (which was conceived by Valerie and howard and designed by a Cork artist-Dan O’Connell) is a visual extension of this idea.

IN VALOUR’s tracks have been played on national and local radio and reviewed in many publications – with positive results;

Dan Hegarty, 2FM said “Listen to these songs, you’ll love them like I do! They’re only starting out, but what a start.”

Jackie Hayden of Hot Press said that Valerie’s “ultra-tuneful voice floats atop a swathe of dreamy synthy washes”.

Having drawn comparisons to the Cocteau Twins and Zero 7 – Jim Carroll of The Irish Times described their sound as “sultry post-dance floor pop”.

IN VALOUR would describe their musical style as song based electronica but you can make up your own mind on this. The next natural step in this musical evolution is to play live and IN VALOUR are delighted to be lined up to play at the Roundy Room sessions, Cork on Thursday 4th March @ 9pm. Thank you Mutant Space!

www.myspace.com/invalour

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Poetry by Alan Maguire

roggernaut | Short fiction and poetry | March 3, 2010

Maniacal Monsters

From my body,
The blood is draining,
Hair is standing,
It’s fucking raining,
From head to toe,
I’m covered in red,
- some battle wounds,
And I’m almost dead.
I fought some maniacal monsters in the dark,
Some had roared, while others had barked,
I carried a sword,
Forged by my dad,
It did the job,
And it made me look bad,
They came from a dimension,
But I don’t know its name,
But all I heard, it’s so fucking lame,
Released to cause havoc and raised to kill,
Those maniacal monsters are now lying still,
I knew they were coming,
I was told in a prophecy,
Twenty years of training, it was all down to me,
Only 250 were released, into the park,
There I was standing, waiting in the dark,
They attacked after a charge, but I knew what to do.
I’m a trained acrobat,
And I just said “screw you!”,
The first 125 fell, but not with ease,
Over 100 left to slaughter – hurry up, please!!
The final group taken care of, and my dad I was about to call,
Then from the heavens, the rain started to fall.
It will take me a week to recover, and I did all I could,
My dad you could tell, was very proud,
But all he said was “ Son, you did good.”

427 total views, 0 today

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