London - Tate Modern and Shunt
My favourite pieces in the Tate Modern were in the Surrealist section, on the only level that i had time to see properly in 2.5 hours. There was a sculpture by a man, and the name sounded like object of art but actually meant phallic object in french. It was a phallic lump of bronze which had been made out of a support for the chest of a female sculpture that the artist had made but which had broken off, and as the plaque pointed out, it was like an inversion of a woman being made from a man's rib. There was another piece that had been painted over another painting. The original painting was a painting of a botanists' picture of a plant, rejected from the art show it was made for. What was painted over it was a man with a fig-leaf over it to suggest censorship. Another piece was a 'male' and 'female' made out of aprons, and the female was like a triangle with a little flap over the top of it. That probably won't make a lot of sense in that description of it (blame the censors) but if you ask me about it i'll explain it better.
After the tate modern i lost my earring, found it again, then we paid our entry to an event/venue called Shunt, and went and had some of the best indian food i've ever had, and two bottles of a really good wine. The second bottle was ordered as the result of a misunderstanding, and left us all rather drunk. I lost my earring for the second time. We made it back to Shunt a little bit late.
Shunt was set up by a group of about 6-8 women who used vacant spaces to set up theatre, live music, art, comedy and various other entertainment. They had set up in a disused subway station for the last 3 years. They usually fill to capacity within a couple of hours of opening, and only allow 8 non-members in per night, which is why we bought our entry early then returned. The night we went, they had an exhibit on some of the oldest people in the world. They had another exhibit on women's early contribution to comedy in film, with several differnt black and white silent films playing. At first it was a little hard to understand what was going on, but then the films all turned out to be quite hilarious, most involved one actor in her 40s or so, but one film was in french and involved an actor who looked about 3 years old and was really really amazing, playing a child detective. It was as funny as most of the comedy i watch these days. It's such a shame that you can't just find things like that, you have to go to an event where someone happens to know about it and how to get hold of it and can show it, and there must be a lot more stuff like it that's just lost to the world.
They also had a comedian who was also a drag-king, although that had little to do with the jokes and most seemed to be about her life outside of it. She said that, of course women should do self-defence courses, but that there was also somethign that she really didn't like about them -maybe instead some men should just have to do how to not be a dickhead courses. She also talked about her work referring her to a course on how to deal with difficult people, where there was a scenario where Difficult John verbally abused Jane, and then the leader asked for suggestions as to how jane could deal with this difficult person. She said that jane would be entitled to do anything out of various options such as crying or swearing at him in response. She also joked about hating facebook for all the usual reasons but also because of always having to see profile photos of ex-girlfriends with their new girlfriends on their skiing holidays wearing matching outfits kissing each other with just a little bit of tongue showing.
Then there was some live music that was a cross between jazz and ska with african-ish singing, which Bren and Alex both bought cd's of.
