Falling down under
^ Surfer in collage snapped at the Archigram exhibition this weekend, at the Design Museum.
The exhibition and Archigram have been written about nicely by Dan, so I’ll just remark that it left me feeling elegiac, for a fallen future we used to picture; full of the psychedelic technologies of freedom.
The schemes, epigrams and illustrations looked like they were straight out of the pages of The Invisibles, or at least an imaginary Homes and Gardens feature on Mister Six.
It was interesting to visit with an art-director friend of mine, who was looking at it more through the lens of graphic design, and how the work has influenced recent graphic artists and commercial imagery.
Off down under for a couple of weeks, for some sun, surf and switch-off. I’ll leave you with this from The Guardian Review, a passage on Falling (and surfing) from Nicholas Lezard’s review of “Falling” by Garrett Soden:
“There are primatologists and anthropologists who suggest that it was a very strongly vested interest in not falling that led to our development of consciousness. Smaller animals, such as chimps, need not fear the consequences of a drop from the trees as much as we, or other great apes, such as orang-utans, who climb slowly and with deliberate caution. Besides, we have spent far more time, if you examine our family tree, up that tree than on the ground. With quite sophisticated balance skills, we are certainly very good at controlled falling: skiing, skateboarding, hang-gliding, mountaineering. Captain Cook was flabbergasted at the surfers of Hawaii: a lieutenant on the Discovery commented that the Hawaiians’ skill was “scarce to be credited”.Surfing, for them, was a matter of deep religious significance, and when the Calvinist missionaries arrived, Soden writes, “a gravity sport was attacked as the devil’s work” – and not for the first time. Falling has always been metaphorically consistent in this regard: it is not approved of.”
Back in May.
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