STUNPOR

BAZ

VOL 27 -Ceri Hand Special featuring: MARIA MILLAR, ALAN DAVEY and PETER BAZELGETTE in RIMBAUD ABSINTHE mix up. HAWKWIND DRUMMER in summer FETE madness.

2013

Number 33 one pound and fifteen pence

G E N H I T M R T O A O I F L L P R O S E F P T R R E O D UN ONAL P N RAT I O I T T A A N S I N A G OR

Art world think tank BAZ has received shocking images of Arts

Council officials deciding upon National Portfolio Organisations (NPO) funding status by playing regular Friday afternoon games of ‘Splat The Under Performing NPO Rat’ (STUNPOR) IN THE TOILETS. Footage of this depraved adaptation of the much loved village fete game was sent to the BAZ interns (Steve and Sue) within a hollowed out edition of Parkett.1 BAZ have friends in high places; they also have a friend at the Arts Council.

Accompanied only by a note saying only ‘BAZZ (sic), Please help - if you hurry we may save the Stanley Picker Gallery or at least the Otolith group’ (scrubbed out) was a USB stick with footage that will shock regular BAZ readers.2 Despite mobile phones being banned at the lavish Manchester Arts Council HQ, ‘The Hive’, 3 BAZ’s new mole-friend 4 had evidently

A Spokesman from the English National Opera yesterday.

1 Not knowing initially what it was, the self-styled ‘SAS’ team had used it as prop to keep the office window open for 2 weeks, until a nesting seagull dislodged it to reveal its secret contents.

2 A hardy bunch, but a few genuine nutters.

3 After images emerged of a relationship manager having her hair dyed in a Ryan Trecartin film.

4 Steve, Finance, South-West.

captured something extraordinary on his homemade pin-hole camera.5 Footage shows participants plucking dead rats adorned with logos of NPO’s out of a hat and then throwing them down a drainpipe for a colleague to try and splat with a rolled up copy of Art Monthly.6

When Relationship Managers Attack!

This is a cruel, cruel game that has now sadly become endorsed by ACE executives, who bet huge sums of internal budgets on the out c om e s . 7 8 Many staff and interns have unwittingly become addicted, with every swipe of a rolled up copy of Art Monthly taking a small part of the pain that repeatedly studying the estimated budgets of failed Grants for the Arts funding applications can create.

The Origins of STUNPOR Rumour has it that this bizarre game began after Culture secretary Maria Millar9 had sent a letter and parcel to ACE chief Alan ‘Wavey’ Davey and fellow ex hippy Peter ‘Barry’ Bazelgette.10 The gift – Rimbaud Absinthe – went down a storm with Wavey and Barry who ended up on the roof of The Hive seeing which Cubitt catalogues would fit down a drainpipe. This then turned into a pooh stick like game with different Cubitt catalogues.11 Until eventually after several hours, a crude game of ‘Splat the Cubbit catalogue’ emerged with an intern encouraged to run between two drainpipes to hit the catalogues12 as Wavey and Barry hurled them down.

The barely believable photographic evidence acquired by BAZ13 would suggest that senior managers have now seized upon the popularity of STUNPOR as a means to incentivise weary lower level Arts Council staff. 14 Rumours are that the game has now also been incorporated in to a cruel Performance Management Review system with a drainpipe installed in every Arts Council toilet15 and regular games taking place on Friday afternoons. Only the highest scoring relationship managers survive. 16 The Future for NPOs has never been bleaker, who’d be an NPO ‘Rat in the Hive’ with this lot in power? Sure you get the occasional bottle of Aperol or trip to Whitstable, but mostly its buying 3 for 2 salads in Marks and Spencers and emailing people you don’t like. Is it all worth it? Surely it’s just easier to ban opera? ug ‘13

Now Play the game!

hA at 17t S ! d an h) Ceri H g hard cas f o e et (brin the F

At Arts Council toilet may look BAZ have re-created what a STUNPOR

like. From our careful recreation you can also see that the Arts Council toilets are now awash with crude self-reflective Arts Council graffiti17, aggressive slogans18 and pure out-and-out smut.19 One passer-by has described it as looking like Cedar Lewisohn has curated a show of recent graduates and then fucked off midway through the install, but BAZ feel that this is a tad excessive. www.bazbazbaz.com

5 The camera was constructed from a pin pricked hard-boiled egg-shell. Some have compared the life-style in ‘The Hive’ as akin to the ‘make do and mend’ mentality of a high security prison.

6 Graffitied copies are often to hand in Arts Council toilets.

7 Some apparently watch from leather desk chairs wheeled in to the toilets especially for the occasion, whilst others follow by setting up fake meetings at MIMA and watch via Skype from the comfort of First Class Virgin train carriages.

8 It has been rumoured that the betting was an idea Maria Millar had hoped the Lib Dems would adopt but didn’t. A legacy of this failed policy is that execs are regularly encouraged to bet by a large floating head of Nick Serota shouting ‘Bet in Play NOW!’ when they open their internal emails.

9 The ‘real life Nicola Murray’ – A comment made by ‘Yoyoegg’ on 07/20/2013 12.12pm in response to Christine Odone’s article ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria Miller? http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10188217/How-doyou-solve-a-problem-like-Maria-Miller.html 10 A gift to curry favour with ex Hawkwind bassist Davey.

11 Incidentally, the quickest Cubitt catalogue down a drain-pipe (20 metres) is ‘Walk-Through’ by Redmond Entwistle.

12 Until they had to go back to school for double Maths.

13 Actually acquired in exchange for a selection of regional Gallery Café receipts.

14 Sure beats going on a studio visit to Wolverhampton.

15 You can locate them easily by hearing out for whimpering noises and the smashing of mirrors.

16 And even then they’re likely to be moved to the dreaded ‘Combined Arts’ desk.

17 ‘You’re not funded, you’re not funded, you’ve not funded anymore’ in hand drawn recreation of VIVID font.

‘Stop, Collaborate and listen, ACE ACE baby’ The AC Team: - ‘I love it when an application comes together!’

- ‘I’m going on that Aeroplane!’ (To Ars Elecronica) - ‘I pity the fool who goes out trying to take over da art world, then runs home cryin to his - relationship manager!’

18 Slogans such as ‘which NPO’s going down the tubes?’, ‘Splat the under performing National Portfolio Organisation Rats’ and ‘No more Callum Innes retrospectives.’

19 ‘Dial extension 3478 for a good time [and the lowdown on proposed changes to theatre workshop funding for South East.]’

Where’s Wavey?