Hello, goodbye

Roni Horn, Untitled 2001

Capa / Falling Soldier

To be honest, I thought that the Robert Capa exhibition was overrated.

The photos just didn't seem to be artistic. They didn't have interesting compositions, they weren't aesthetic, they weren't even different.

Mostly they were unfocussed, unambiguous and unexciting.

Apparently Capa claimed that if you said your art was photojournalism, it would suddenly generate excitement. But the problem is that these photos didn't appear to be anything more than that. They are groundbreaking because they were from the front line, from a practically undocumented war zone. They were used for journalistic purposes only.

It's also bound to be related to the fact that photojournalism today is worlds apart from those grainy, black-and-white shots that Capa risked his life for. It's hard to interpret early, poor quality photography objectively, because the high-tech digital cameras everyone has today are so powerful with their mega-pixels, their complex processing, their auto-everything. It has made us consider photography a means of replicating reality rather that an art form used to interpret it.

I think Richter understands that photos can add an extra dimension to what you see. I saw his retrospective at Edinburgh recently.

His "photo-paintings" shouldn't be as profound as they are: you could think of them as a reproduction of a reproduction, nothing more.

But somewhere, subtlely, things have been added, changed, faces become more obscure, the sky becomes darker, people become edgier, more fragile.

Richter / Man Shot Down

I think that if Richter used some of Capa's blurry photos of Spanish Republicans poised and alone against desolate Spanish rocks, and painted in the tension, the melancholy that is missing... he would make them beautiful.

This is a good time

to test whether or not CBT actually works.

childhood = nightmare

I have had a sudden newfound appreciation for children's books.

In particular I think children's dystopian novels are so less often canonised and isolated than adult novels with just as much depressing, disturbing content. Not that I know much about this genre at all, but I think teenagers certainly have a healthy skepticism that adults often lack, and based on some of the books I have chosen for my Year 9 book club('How I Live Now' by Meg Rossoff, 'The Giver' by Lois Lowry, 'Noughts and Crosses' by Malorie Blackman), teenagers never seem to view dystopia as a drastic, nightmare vision of society, but more of an entirely feasible, almost familiar situation. I don't think this is because they believe everything they read, if anything it's the opposite of that. Teenagers have witnessed so much and are told to follow so many rules that it all becomes a hideous nightmare anyway. Maybe dystopia is just a metaphor for adolescence, as I'm pretty sure that 13-18 year olds are currently the most oppressed of all age groups: the most likely to be terrorised and demonised, the group most lacking in democratic representation, and those who are most exposed to the crushing disappointment of society.

I don't know why there're been such an uproar about Dizzee Rascal appearing on Newsnight, I actually think he made some valid points.

Librarians V Farmers

Librarians	Farmers
Get to hang out with children	Get to hang out with animals
Unlimited books	Unlimited eggs
Peace and quiet (supposedly)	Lively animal sounds and smells
Clean	Filthy
Warm	May have to deal with extreme weather conditions
Minimal work-related stress	Numerous animal-related occupational hazards
Spend hours at a time stickering, stamping, covering books and spinelabelling	Spend hours at a time mucking out filthy stables
Situated in the haven of any school	Situated in the haven of a sprawling urban nightmare

Conclusion: all other jobs are dreadful.

(P.S. Learnt how to make a table on HTML! Disproportionately proud of this.)

Swings and roundabouts in education

I'm shocked at what is happening to Adult Education. The existence of tuition fees in universities is bad enough, without partial privatisation of further education colleges, a necessity for adult social mobility. Currently colleges only receive the full cost of tuition for people aged 16-19, or those on benefits, most of which are forced to take classes against their will by job centres hence are unlikely to profit from them. Everyone else has to fork out extortionate fees, often without even the option of paying a concessionary rate. Consequently the classes are so undersubscribed they are often cut, partially cancelled or made more expensive. I have already paid £375 for my A level Biology class, only to be told that due to an (unsurprising) shortage of students taking the class they would have to cut two thirds of the lessons, meaning there would not be enough time to cover the syllabus, and instead a "drop in tutorial" would run every three weeks. This is not only a scandalous rip-off but also a complete let-down, especially as people were only told about these arrangements after they had spent several hours enrolling. The fact that they even run courses that are "Full Cost Recovery" with no discount regardless of income strikes me as deeply unfair and also inherently agist: if you haven't got all the qualifications you need by the time you're 19, then tough luck, there are no more educational opportunities available to you.

On the bright side, year 9 SATs have been scrapped with immediate effect, taking some of the brutal exam pressure off 14 year olds. Whilst the teachers at my school were cheering about this the perhaps more perceptive year 9s were skeptical: "it's all the same really, we've been threatened with end-of-year assessments instead" said one, "and they'll probably make us do more church services 'just for fun' ". Obviously the "creative opportunities" we were promised was another staff room euphemism.

Working in a school is quite disorientating sometimes.

(It's exactly like everything you've ever seen on Teachers as well, by the way.)

Kids never get bored

The top three recurrent jokes in the library are:

1. Writing "lol" instead of your name on the computer booking form.

2. Pretending to read the Bible (or something else suitably long).

3. Stealing mouse balls.

Catless again

Among the scribbled tangle
of the branches of that garden tree
only about two hundred
lime-coloured leaves still shudder

but the hunting cat
perched in the middle of the scribble
believes he's invisible
to the few sparrows visiting
the tips of the tree

like a giant soldier
stnading in a grey street at noon
wearing a bright ginger uniform
hung with guns
hung with grenades
who holds a sprig of heather up
as he shouts to the houses:
Come out! It's all right,
I'm only a hillside!

- Adrian Mitchell

Louis never did have much stealth.