Tribe Magazine Issue 5 by Mark Doyle

2009

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tribe magazine

issue 5

Editor In Chief Mark Doyle

WELCOME TO ISSUE 5 OF TRIBE MAGAZINE

Editor Ali Donkin

conference repeating the mantra “developers, developers, developers”. What Ballmer is

Associate Editor Tilly Craig

developers. Without them developing software there is no innovation, and the industry dies.

Editorial Director Peter Davey

the future, is collaboration. I’m amazed however at how little actual real collaboration goes

Marketing Director Steve Clement-‐Large

There is a very well known video on youtube of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a saying is that the key to the future of MIcrosoft and the IT industry in terms of innovation are It’s pretty much the same for the arts sector -‐ but what it needs to develop now and into on in the arts world, due to an inbuilt ‘silo mentality’. There is a distinct lack of funding in the arts, and London attracts most of it. Outside

Client Manager Jean Camp

London, spending on the arts per head is chronically low. It’s no surprise then that arts

Cover Jamie Reid

pie. But the only real way for each of us working in the arts to maxmise our organisational

Photography Mark Doyle (except where noted)

By collaborating outcomes for audiences increases, engagement increases, marketing and

Contributors Glyn Davies, Clarice Goncalves, Lianne Marie La Touche, Jamie Reid, Luke Joyce, Hayley Kendal, Bill Lewis, Dean McDowell, Paul Whitehead, Antony Pilbro

organisations collaborating fully?

CONTACT

relationship with a dedicated delivery partner. There is also the added fear that they may not

To submit work: tribesubmit@gmail.com To say hello: tribequery@gmail.com

be the main provider in a partnership and therefore fear of losing some control also plays its

Full submission details can be found on our website:

organisation as a threat, why not instead see them as an opportunity? It’s a very simple

www.tribemagazine.org

asking me who tribes competitors are -‐ I genuinely have no idea who is. I don’t see

Artists have given permission for their work to be displayed in tribe magazine. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder(s)

competitors or ‘threats’ in the market, just organisations tribe could potentially partner with

TRIBE MAGAZINE ISSUE 5

organisations develop a ‘silo mentality’ as we all fight for a very small slice of the arts funding potential, and more importantly, those that benefit directly from the arts, is to collaborate. publicity outcomes increase and knowledge transfer increases too. So why aren’t more arts From personal experience, a large part of what is stopping real collaborative practice is a mixture of fear and ignorance. There is a fear from many organisations that someone may ‘steal’ ideas from them or money from an identified funding pot, and ignorance as it’s easy to make assumptions about partnership working without ever fully experiencing a fruitful

part. Together fear and ignorance make a potent mix and ensure that the barriers to engagement between organisations reminds high. But instead of seeing every other dynamic to switch around, but one that tribe embraces whole-‐heartedly. I get alot of people

to create great work. Just think what the arts scene would be like if everyone thought like that? Mark Doyle, Editor in Chief

CONTENTS

6 CLARICE GONCALVES

30 JAMIE REID

54 PAUL WHITEHEAD

42 LUKE JOYCE

LIANNE MARIE LA TOUCHE

DEAN MCDOWELL

102

HAYLEY KENDAL

72 ANTHONY PILBRO

92 BILL LEWIS

GLYN DAVIES

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The Simultaneous And Successive

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The Inaudible Sound Of Constant Presence

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Condensation

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Embroidering White Labyrinths

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Culverins Waves

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Clarice Gonçalves claricegoncalves.blogspot.co.uk

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Multifarious Phenomena Specific

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architectonic fashion CREDITS Lianne Marie La Touche [lilimarie.boutique@yahoo.co.uk] [http://on.fb.me/LWVBcX] Erika Thomas: [www.cre8tivemakeup.com] [info@cre8tivemakeup.com] Cleo Miami: [cleo.p@live.co.uk] [cleomiami.weebly.com] Savita Shukla: [savitashukla@hotmail.com] Mark Doyle: [misophotography.weebly.com]

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duchesse satin and netting dress 22

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satin digital printed corset; cotton drill trouser

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polycotton blouse, suede laser cut skirt

cotton drill and cotton satin digital printed coat

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PVC conical bra corset, cotton tape and steel boning crinoline ISSUE 5 TRIBE MAGAZINE

Cotton drill and power mesh top, cotton drill and polyester structured skirt

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Jersey top,ripstop structured skirt

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“You have to create a spark. I think that’s what art should do, create a spark.” PETE DAVEY TALKS TO JAMIE REID transcription/glyn davies

You recently designed the cover for Folk

don’t do much graphic design now, I’m

that. It was multimedia, and involved

The Banks [a compilation album in support

much more involved with painting.

music, dance, visuals, all sorts of stuff.

In the 1980s, you were part of Visual

So how’s Liverpool today compared to the

Stress, a multimedia group based in

eighties and the Visual Stress era?

of the Occupy movement]. How did that come about? I’d just done quite a big exhibition in

Liverpool. Could you explain your

London, in a place called The Bear Pit in

involvement in that?

Southwark, and just across the Millennium

Well it’s weird, because now to do anything in Liverpool you have to apply for

Bridge was all the happenings at St Paul’s,

Yeah, it was a collective of people in

permission and go to meetings and sign

so I got involved with that, and out of that I

Liverpool who got up to all sorts of

loads of health and safety forms. Whereas

was asked if I’d do a sleeve for the album

skulduggery! We used to do big events in

what was interesting about the eighties and

and a poster. I reworked the image of

Liverpool, and organise festivals and

the people I worked with in Liverpool, there

Liberty, from the Delacroix painting, which

marches and stuff, and basically used to

was no money involved, so you actually got

I’d originally done for Suburban Press in the

take over the town. The sort of stuff we

off your arse and did things. There was a

mid-‐1970s. Then I’d had the Croydon

used to do you’d probably get arrested for

lot more spontaneity. >

skyscrapers behind Liberty, but this time we

now. There were whole events based

changed it to having all the corporate

around the theme of slavery and things like

banks, Canary Wharf and all that. I actually

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Do you find that art today seems to have

many ways it’s a retrospective, including

Blair basically took over the Thatcher

to be more corporate or commercially

stuff that was done in the last few weeks

legacy, it’s just continued from the late

backed?

and stuff that was done in the early

seventies until now, really. But, you know,

seventies.

people are still having a go, and people are

Well, y’know, I’ve never really done any

still protesting. I’ve been involved with

exhibitions in any major galleries; I’ve never

You come from a very politically active

squatting movements and the Occupy

really been involved with the art scene. I

family. Could you tell us a bit about your

movement and all that from early days, and

mean, the Tate has bought some of my

background?

I think it’s a worldwide phenomenon now.

work in the last few years, but I’ve tended

But people can’t effectively change things

to do stuff like the Bear Pit thing, and I’ve

Yeah, I blame me parents! From my very

like they used to. I had a great sense of

got an exhibition that’s on in L.A. at the

early days, my parents and my older

disillusionment after that massive anti-‐war

moment, ‘Ragged Kingdom’, which is very

brother were involved with the CND

rally. I mean, it was over a million people,

much a broad perspective of a lot of my

movement and I was dragged along to

the biggest gathering of people on a

work, and includes a lot of the recent stuff

Aldermaston marches. It was very much

political campaign there’s ever been. It

as well as a lot of the political stuff and a

part of the way I was brought up. They

didn’t change anything. Now people are

lot of the punk stuff; it’s all mixed together.

were always really supportive, my parents

now seeing through all the shit and doing

And I did do that in London earlier in the

and my brother. They were socialists, when

things for themselves.

year: I created eight teepees, and inside

there still used to be socialists involved in

each teepee was different aspects of my

the Labour Party. I mean, now the Labour

work, like there was a punk one, there was

Party might as well be the Tory Party! From

a Suburban Press one, there was a Visual

Thatcher, through Blair, to Cameron, I think

Stress one, there was an Eightfold Year one,

Cameron’s probably the worst of the lot.

and that’s an exhibition that we want to continue touring around the world. In

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Do you think your involvement with the

demonstrations, and that big kick-‐off, it

of the education system. Things like art

Occupy movement will help?

brought Thatcher down, didn’t it? So

and music, they’re so important. And you

things can have an effect. But what’s

have the whole fucking horror of ‘Brit-‐Art’.

I think every little bit helps. It’s all good.

interesting about the Occupy campaign is

I find it interesting that the people who

It’s all part and parcel; it’s probably art in

that it hasn’t got an agenda. It’s finding it’s

created Brit-‐Art, with the approval of

the right place.

own way, and it’s worldwide.

Saatchi and Saatchi, are the people who got Thatcher into power. I still think it’s back to

You were involved in the student protest

Do you think the reason it doesn’t have an

that whole punk ethos: the people who are

movement yourself in the 1960s.

agenda is because young people are

at the bottom of the pile, if you give them

disillusioned with any government?

the spark, they’re the people who are

Yeah, that’s when I first met Malcolm

creating easily the best art. You know, it’s

McLaren, we were involved with student

Absolutely. It’s a matter of finding things

just silly things. I was watching a film last

occupations. This was at Croydon Art

for yourself. But these things come and go.

night called Knights of the South Bronx. It

School. We took over the college for a

We’re going through a period of massive

was about this businessman who ended up

couple of months! At the same time, you

change. The Western capitalist system will

teaching part-‐time, and these are like the

had all that was happening in Paris. It was

go. America will go, like Rome went.

poorest black kids in the Bronx, and he got

quite a worldwide phenomenon. You had

Things change. I just hope we haven’t

them into chess. And they became the

the anti-‐Vietnam student movement, and

fucked up the planet too much.

American national chess champions; within

these things did have an effect, and it

a year they were playing all these posh

proves that you can have an effect.

Where do you see art in all this? Does it

schools, and they fucking won it! And I

Because I don’t think that without those

have an important role?

think that’s so typical of what can happen

protests, we would have had an end to the

when you give those sort of kids a chance.

Vietnam war. I was also involved with

I think art should be something that’s much

You have to create a spark. I think that’s

things like the Poll Tax campaign. All those

more universal. It’s almost been taken out

what art should do, create a spark.

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Do you think art should also have a

probably 50% of the people there are late

But, you know, you don’t get art reviews

political message?

teens or early twenties.

now. What you do get now, with computers, is everyone linking on the net.

Yeah, it should do. It should question

Your work does seem to resonate with

It’s a whole different world now, and it’s

everything and look for new ways of doing

young people, from the Sex Pistols to

nothing to do with all that shit.

things.

things like Suburban Press, which was before punk.

‘Eightfold Year’ is one of your more recent

Do you find art centres and places like that are killing art?

projects. Could you explain a bit about

Yeah, Suburban Press was in the early

that?

seventies. It was part and parcel of a whole

To a certain extent, yeah they are. They

movement of community politics and

just want to play it safe. Like being in

It’s a celebration of the Eightfold Year.

people sort of painting and doing things for

Liverpool, with the ‘Capital of Culture’ thing

We’ve just had the Spring Equinox, you’ve

themselves. It was involved with the

– art shouldn’t be a competition. And in

got the Winter and Summer solstices. If I’m

squatting movement, the women’s

Liverpool, they just wanted art that was

not painting, I spend a lot of time down me

movement, black power, it was all those

totally safe. It was outside people who

allotment growing things. And again, I

things happening. It’s all relative, but it’ll

organised it all, it was just ridiculous.

think if people were to actually plant and

all happen again. These things come in

They’ve redeveloped Liverpool, and

grow stuff for themselves, the world would

cycles. And I think that Western capitalism

Liverpool, like every major Western town, is

be a better place. I was very much brought

is on the verge of total collapse.

losing its unique character. You’ve got the

up with that – you know, as much you need

same modern architecture, the same

political change, you need spiritual change.

A lot of your graphics for Suburban Press

corporate stores, and every city is

My family has been involved with Druidism,

looked very similar to what you designed

beginning to look like every other city.

and while I’m not a druid myself, it’s always

for the Sex Pistols.

been an influence, so I actually believe that

Finally, I wanted to bring up your work in

there’s a universal religion that’s very deep,

It was, yeah, it was a whole continuing

Afro Celt Sound System. What was that

very old. It could be Native American, it

thing; it’s the thing that’s continued

like?

could be Aboriginal. There’s an awful lot to

throughout. I mean, the stuff I’ve done for

learn from those people. We’ve lost our

the anti-‐Poll Tax stuff, the Criminal Justice

Oh yeah, that was an absolute delight. I

harmony with the planet, haven’t we?

Bill, you know, it’s a continuing story.

worked with Afro Celt Sound System for

Would you put that down to capitalism?

Are you still doing much collage work?

Oh, very much so. People have to struggle

Not so much now, I’m much more into

used to do the visuals for them. It’s weird

to get by, don’t they? Debts, bills,

painting.

for me, that, because I’ve got a whole

about five years. I was like their visual director. I used to do the stage shows, as well as the posters and the graphics, and I

whatever. If you think of what’s happened

fanbase there, and a whole fanbase for the

to the education system, all these things

Where do you think contemporary art

Pistols things, but people don’t like to link

should be birthrights. Everyone should

goes from here, given that we have the

the two. I think that’s one of the things I’ve

have access to education. Now you have to

Saatchi gallery, the Tate and so on? How

found with the art that I do, they want to

fucking pay to go to university, it’s unreal!

do we get it out of there?

pigeonhole you, so I’ll forever be the

These things are really fundamental, basic

person who did ‘God Save The Queen’!

rights. We’ve basically got a whole

Well, the Western economy’s collapsed, so

generation of youths and kids who’ve been

it will all go out the window, won’t it? It’s

demonized. They haven’t got a say. They

such a little clique of people, the critics, the

should have a say. I’m in my mid-‐sixties

artists involved, the gallery owners, it’s just

now, but if I want to do anything with my

unreal. But there’s more and more art

work and my art, it’s to inspire that

happening. I’ve done two major

generation. It’s interesting that with all the

exhibitions in London, a massive show in

major exhibitions that we’ve done,

Rio De Janeiro, got this big show in L.A.

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Luke Joyce donotresuscitate.co.uk 52

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PLYMOUTH SOUND? ARTIST PAUL WHITEHEAD DEPICTS LIFE IN PLYMOUTH IN STARK DETAIL. HIS PAINTINGS ARE VIGNETTES OF STREET LIFE THAT CAPTURE THE ESSENCE OF MODERN CITY LIVING. HE TALKS TO TRIBE ABOUT HIS WORK. Transcript: Glyn Davies

SOME of your work has been hung at a local

because there are a lot of people going

café, you’ve had an exhibition and have

through that place and seeing it, and it’s

recently sold some work.

establishing my name, and it’s also doing what

Yeah, that’s a confidence booster. It’s all right

I want to do, which is passing on the ideas that

having your work up, that gives you valuable

I’m trying to convey in the paintings.

exposure, but if you have it up too long without

They’re not difficult ideas, but they are

selling it, it affects your confidence. Even when

challenging in some ways, and I’ve been

you know the reasons: it’s winter, it might be

pleased with the response.

placed badly or it’s possibly just there to give

because they’re pictures of Plymouth.

the café owner something to put on his wall!

when they look at what they actually are, they

It’s what we used call an “inner skin” in the

can seem a bit ambiguous; it’s not always

rave days; it changes the character of the

putting Plymouth in a great light.

place.

And he’s a good businessman, so he

look at it and look beyond that, and see what

sees the potential of that. It doesn’t matter one

I’m actually trying to do with it – I’m not trying

little bit to him whether or not the work sells. It

to say Plymouth’s rubbish. >

matters to me, but it doesn’t matter too much

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People like them Then

But people

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My work is about the analysis of space: the duality within space and the importance of space.

What I’m

promoting – because you have to have a unique selling point – is that I have a contextual basis for my art, in that I understand what the significance of space is, the significance of architecture.

I understand what

difficulties can arise from duality of space: public spaces can also be private spaces. >

There’s a political element: public and private spaces

I did a little bit of reading on it from a book called

have changed since the Thatcher era.

Ground Control.

Places that

I can’t remember the name of the

were public have become private. Social housing has

author [Anna Minton?], but she did a massive analysis

been demolished to make way for shopping malls, and

of how public and private space has changed in this

the actual definition of public and private space

country.

changes at that point.

Without going into the spiel,

communities for protection; they want to protect their

there’s a place in Manchester, I can’t remember what

wealth as the division between them and those in

it’s called, and it’s a public open space.

But it’s

poverty increases. Without getting political - because

classified as a private space because it’s privately

I’m not a political animal – but I am a working class

owned, and legally it’s a different place to be in, the

person who is trying to better himself, and also trying

rules are different, and people aren’t aware of that.

to make himself more aware of his place in this society,

Something could happen to you, you could be

and how society needs to change to be more inclusive.

arrested, and the rules for your being arrested would

Having read that and looked at the way this country is,

be different to what they would be in a normal public

I can see it’s not always going in that direction, and

space.

sometimes I just want to highlight that, without

Wealthy people are moving into gated

necessarily standing on a soapbox.

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There are difficulties in Plymouth, which is the sort of

Your work has a sense of capturing the moment, like

thing I’m highlighting: resistance to change in some of

photography.

the poorer areas, ignorance, lack of aspiration. As a

photography before you paint.

play-worker, and as a painter, I am trying to change

about that process.

that.

It’s a small crusade, but it’s important, and it’s

I go around with my camera every day of the week, so

important not to lecture people while you do it, but it’s

my camera stays on me. If I see something interesting,

important to actually show it.

it goes in there.

And that’s the

But you do use a certain amount of Explain how you go

What attracts me is composition and

contextual basis of my work, and if I can convey that, it

colour.

I’m just waiting the opportunity to see

makes it a marketable object, because people like that,

something that has natural composition, and if I have

they like a story. They like to buy an experience, and

the camera, I can be in the place to spot it and do

that’s what I sell people, without being cynical about it.

something about it. >

I don’t want to be a cynical artist, I want to do what I love and carry on doing what I love forever. I don’t want to be all about the money. But at the same time, you need money to be able to promote yourself and give you the freedom to do what you want to do.

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Then I just stick it on the Mac, leave the image

to sound pretentious.

there, look at it and start putting paint on canvas. I

a skateboarder, and immediately you’re that, you

used to do it through projection, but I find that it

are an outsider.

does leave the picture looking semi-photographic,

you have a unique perspective forced upon you,

but not quite, because you can never transfer a

and you either run with that or you let it squash

photograph onto canvas successfully and make it

you.

look real, so you’re torn between two worlds: it’s

punk, became very nihilistic, which led to leading a

not realistic and it’s not a photograph either. It’s

very rough lifestyle, and from that I became a

unsatisfying.

I’m developing my own style, so I

traveller, which is an even rougher lifestyle! I was

want that satisfaction of… not putting my imprint on

always looking to be hardcore, that was the thing

it exactly, but we’re all born with a unique eye,

back then, and I realised at the end of a very long

we’re all born with our own unique perspective on

and rough journey that to be as hardcore as

the world.I’ve been lucky enough, all my adult life,

possible basically involves living in the gutter! >

to live on the edges of our society, without wanting 58

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I grew up as a punk rocker,

So maybe I’m outsider art.

But

And I decided to run with it. I started as a

You don’t really need to do that to

them, but I can claim to aspire to

be an ar tist.

So I star ted

be like them. What made me want

struggling back up and trying to

to be like Van Gogh was reading

make something of myself, and

Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of

then I stumbled upon the rave

Perception, when he talked about

culture, which again is looking at

Van Gogh’s chair, and about

society from the outside.

being the chair.

You

I can relate to

develop a unique perspective; it’s

that, that’s what I want to do. I’ve

a different culture, walking into a

been to the National Gallery and

room with two thousand people all

I’ve seen the chair.

moving in unison with white gloves

cry. It’s moving. Good art can be

on.

really moving, and that’s what I

It looked like a bunch of

It made me

monkeys going mental!

want to do, and at the same time

And like all the other things I’ve

say this is one possibility of how

been into, it was ephemeral.

society can be; it doesn’t all have

It’s

not that I wanted to be those

to be about materialism.

things, that’s where I ended up. I didn’t just decide I was going to be

Would you agree that your work

a punk, but punk was inclusive,

captures the everyday, and is

and everything I’ve looked for in

more a reflection of reality, rather

the world has been about being

than merely trying to capture

part of a family. You know, being

images that are beautiful or

brought up by a single parent,

“nice”?

t here was always somet hing

Yeah, ugly and beautiful are very

lacking there.

subjective terms.

I like the unique

It’s a very

perspective I’ve gained through all

Buddhist thing: I mean, they make

the things I’ve done. It defines me,

Buddhist monks look at internal

it makes me different and people

organs and things like that to see

like to look at things from different

the beauty in them.

angles. A good filmmaker will pull

beauty everywhere; it’s just being

you into their world, it ’s

open to it and receptive to it.

believable. They can transfer their

When I’m depressed, everything’s

view of the world to you, and if

ugly and I hate everything, but

they have intelligence, and if they

that’s not a bad thing either as

have empathy for what they’re

long as you are aware of it while

looking at, it’s brilliant.

it’s going on.

Stanley

There’s

You can still paint

Kubrick did that and Terry Gilliam

when you’re feeling like that, it’s

does that. They both have beautiful

an interesting exercise in looking

visions and they pull you into their

at things from a different

worlds.

perspective.

And that’s all I want, to

But it’s whether

be able to pass on a journey that

you’ve got the energy or

opens up peoples’ minds.

enthusiasm to paint when you’re

People like Monet, Turner, Van

feeling like that! >

Gogh, they all had elements of that, and I can’t claim to be like

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But yes, my work is about the everyday, it’s about

You use colour very vividly. Do you consider that

the world we live in, it’s a document.

to be an important element of your work?

scared of saying my work is a document because

Absolutely.

people can just say it’s a picture of what happened

instantly.

at that particular time, but it’s not.

unfortunately – is colour.

capture people.

It’s trying to

Hopefully, if I’m lucky, my work

It’s what attracts me to something 90% of what sells a painting – If you paint a green

picture, it doesn’t sell because people don’t like

will still be here in 200 years’ time, and people will

green pictures.

say that’s what it felt like to be in 2012. It should

well, but colour is what immediately attracts me

be like that, it shouldn’t be set in concrete. I don’t

and it’s what people latch on to.

want people to completely misunderstand what I

world, that’s what makes it a marketable item, but

do, because otherwise what is the point in doing it?

it also makes it a beautiful item. It is important to

But if they take their own thing away from it, that’s

make beautiful things. That’s subjective, but for me

just like looking at the real thing and taking your

colour is about joy.

own thing away from it.

I’m a bit

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It has to have good content as In a cynical

So there is a sense of progression in your work?

and he knows that. And that’s part of what I want

You can’t afford to stand still as an artist, can you?

to do: make peoples’ art that genuinely excites me

We grow every day. If you’re going to be a good

and genuinely excites other people. You do have

artist, you do it naturally.

You get excited by new

to keep moving on if you want to do that, you

things. Artists all have butterfly minds, hopefully –

can’t just settle on whatever you think is

we want to be excited every day of our lives by

appropriate.

what we look at. I think my real ‘masterplan’ is to

have to be open-minded. <

It’s not very forward thinking. You

create accessible art or peoples’ art in the vein of Anish Kapoor or Antony Gormley.

People love

www.facebook.com/paul.the.painter

their work. I went to the Royal Academy and saw Anish Kapoor’s exhibition.

What really attracted

me was a room full of huge mirrors, and everyone who walked into that room just had a big smile on their face.

It’s like the fairground effect, but these

were slick mirrors.

They were beautiful objects, ISSUE 5 TRIBE MAGAZINE

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Dean McDowell deanmcdowellartist.com

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The Journey In my work the depiction of everyday life are shown under the working title ‘ The Journey’. The work, being part of an ongoing theme that I have been pursuing over a number of years -‐ relates to the dilemma arising from the innate theatricality of human endeavour. The inspiration for my work is gathered through observations, drawings and photographs of fragments from everyday life. I have also taken inspiration from a poem by W.H. Auden, called The Watchers. ‘Deeper towards the summer the year moves on. What if the starving visionary have seen The carnival within our gates, Your bodies kicked about the streets, We need your power still: use it, that none, O, from their tables break uncontrollably away, Lunging, insensible to injury, Dangerous in a room or out wildly Spinning like a top in the field, Mopping and mowing through the sleepless day’ In this exhibition I want the spectator to read the exhibition as a frieze, the continuous everyday incidental happenings with no story intended. The spectator moves through the work, as they would strolling down the street– perhaps deep in thought– and see things as glimpsed from the corner of the eye, when walking past -‐ half remembered events. The viewpoint constantly changes through an emotional and visionary experience of the continuous drama, And you too become aware of this innate theatrically we call life. Anthony Pilbro artvitae.com/artist_portfolio.asp?aist_id=466

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Into The City

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Samson And Delilah

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Among The Innocent

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Out Of The Shadows

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The Day

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The Way Of The World

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The Night

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Top: The Ceefax title page Below: The iconic weather map

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The Joy Of Text Part two of Glyn’s journey into the world of 8-bit technology: a eulogy for the loss of a much loved friend - CEEFAX At some indeterminate point in the early 1980s, my parents bought a new television set.

This was something of a seismic event in our house as it

replaced the decrepit, wood-veneered Pye television that had sat in the corner of our living room for as long as I could remember. The trusty old Pye had served us well over the years, but it had recently developed some eccentric habits, like rendering everything on the screen in a sickly yellow hue, making everyone from Bodie and Doyle to Jan Leeming look like they were suffering from liver failure.

Also the channel-

changing buttons on the front, which were already difficult to operate, being somewhat firmly sprung, had all but seized up, meaning that the TV was more or less permanently stuck on ITV.

A rather horrendous prospect, I

trust you’ll agree. What really grabbed my attention however was the TV’s remote control unit. Slim and colour-coordinated with the TV and video in a pleasing early 80s shade of slate grey, this mysterious hand-held unit opened up an exciting new world for me.

Not only did it save me from ever having to get up and

change channel manually again, the physical ramifications of which are still painfully evident for anyone whose chairs I’ve ever broken,

but it

also introduced me to the gloriously idiosyncratic world of teletext.

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Teletext was developed in the early 1970s as a way of utilising the unused areas of the UHF television signal that existed above and below the visible viewing area, the bits you only ever saw when the vertical hold went on the blink.

It was discovered that these areas could be used to relay simple

text and graphical information over the airwaves to suitably equipped television sets without interfering with picture quality.

So in 1974, the

BBC and ITV began their parallel Ceefax and Oracle teletext services, each offering a few dozen ‘pages’ of news, sport and weather information.

was initially a slow-burner, as teletext-equipped TVs were considerably more expensive than those without.

But by the early 1980s, as the price of

the technology rapidly came down, households with teletext sets had risen considerably, and the dozens of available pages had expanded into the hundreds, while the BBC surreptitiously began to build an even bigger interest in the service by broadcasting Ceefax pages during some programming breaks in its daytime schedules instead of the perennial test card. For a gadget-loving information junkie like me, teletext ticked quite a lot of boxes.

In those pre-internet days, just the very idea of being able to

call up hundreds of pages of continually updating information whenever I wanted them was exciting to me.

I think for a long time I was the only

member of the family who even knew our new TV had this capability.

I’d

only discovered it by accident myself, while I was idly pushing the buttons on the remote, wondering what strange functions like ‘hold’, ‘mix’, ‘reveal’, ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ might possibly pertain to.

I pressed the

button marked ‘text’ and the TV picture disappeared and was replaced with a computerised menu offering a variety of options in a font and graphic style that anyone who ever used a BBC Micro would find very familiar. I keyed in one of the numbers displayed and before long realised I had a fun new toy, one that would lead to an obsession that lasted until 2009, when the analogue television signal in my area was switched off, and teletext – at least teletext in that form - disappeared from my screen forever, and something which in the intervening years had been a daily routine for me was suddenly and irrevocably ripped from my life. 86

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Well, perhaps that’s putting it a tad dramatically, but it was certainly an annoyance at the time, particularly as its replacement, the ‘Red Button’, was - and is - painfully slow and woefully short of the mark in so many ways. The loss of teletext is one of the more unfortunate consequences of television’s relentless march into the digital age.

Only a couple of areas

of the UK still have an analogue television signal, the rest of the country having been gradually switched over to digital over the past three years. By October, analogue television in the UK will be a memory, and analogue teletext will perish with it. When London was finally switched to digital in April 2012, the London-based media - a strange, self-absorbed collective who only ever seem to notice what’s been happening outside the M25 when it impinges on their everyday lives - began to lament the impending death of analogue teletext, with particular attention paid to the BBC’s Ceefax, the first and longestsurviving teletext service.

Ceefax has always been the daddy of teletext

services, particularly after ITV’s fairly decent Oracle service was replaced in 1992 by the imaginatively-named ITV Teletext, which from that point became less a source of useful information and more a repository for endless adverts for cheap holidays and financial services. For me and many millions of others, Ceefax was automatically the first port of call when we pressed the ‘text’ button, probably because, being a BBC product, it tried to cover so many different fields of interest.

There

were many other teletext services I perused regularly (more on these in a bit), but Ceefax was always more trustworthy, more dependable and, I suppose, more BBC, in that it was a bit dull and worthy, but at the same time reassuring and as sane as a pair of corduroy trousers, apart from the letters pages, which were as swivel-eyed, rabid and morbidly entertaining as those you’d find in any tabloid newspaper; an absolute must.

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Top: Demonstrating its power to inform dynamically in the age of the internet Below: Jokes were not any funnier on Ceefax, although some of the news was 88

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I can recall many nights of insomnia during my student days, with Ceefax being the only remedy, as I idly flicked through every single page, from the menu on page 100 to the BBC in-house job vacancies and transmitter information somewhere in the 690s, playing the occasional quiz and picking up some interesting chocolate sponge recipes along the way.

The loneliness

of the late-night teletext surfer. Ceefax really came into its own in the days before rolling 24-hour news, when it was the only place you could watch a major breaking news story unfold, with constant updates appearing on the screen almost as soon as they arrived in the newsroom.

It wasn’t uncommon to find yourself reading

through a story, only to find it had changed completely by the time you got back to the first sub-page.

Election nights were particularly eventful.

It was almost possible to sense the inter-BBC rivalry, seeing if the Ceefax team could get their updates on screen before the studio broadcast them. As a sports fan, the continual updates Ceefax offered were pretty much essential to me, particularly with sporting events that weren’t being televised live.

I spent many a nerve-shredding Saturday afternoon watching

the screen in anguish as Ceefax cycled through the latest scores, hoping beyond hope that by the time my team’s score came around again, they had managed to find the net.

Watching football by teletext might not sound

particularly exhilarating, but the sense of relief when the magical letters ‘FT’ finally appeared next to your team’s winning score could only be matched a few minutes later, when you checked the updated league tables and saw your team riding high in their improved position.

As soon as my team’s

division appeared, I’d press ‘hold’ and bask in the glory of being a few places higher in the league, and then start working out the various possible permutations of the following week’s matches. But Ceefax was just one service.

With the advent of satellite and cable,

there was the possibility of hundreds.

I think I probably tried, on those

same long, insomniac student nights, just about every channel.

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The major channels, such as Sky 1, MTV, Discovery, National Geographic and the like all had fairly in-depth and often quite good teletext services in the old days of analogue satellite, with each one being tailored to the channel’s own specific niche, their familiar logos lovingly rendered in low-res blocks.

However, most channels offered little more than programme

guides and schedules, if anything at all. One I came to really like, somewhat inexplicably, was the teletext service of the German Sat.1 network.

I’m not quite sure why, but some time around

the turn of the 2000s, I started to watch Sat.1 quite a lot.

I can

understand barely a word of German, but that didn’t seem to matter.

tuned in every night to Die Harald Schmidt Show (the German version of David Letterman – the same set, format and, presumably, the same jokes) and could just about follow what was going on.

But after this, there was

usually a classic British comedy series, dubbed into German, which I found irresistible.

To this day, I still love watching familiar TV shows and

movies in a language I don’t understand. sense that way.

Sometimes, they seem to make more

To my delight, I also discovered that Sat.1 had an in-

depth teletext service that, despite being entirely in German, I looked at regularly to check how things were progressing in the Bundesliga, football results and tables being pretty much the same in any language. Teletext may be nearly forty years old now, but I can’t help thinking that it’s being killed off prematurely and unnecessarily, not least because, despite the digital switchover, there is no actual technical impediment to carrying teletext via a digital television signal – there are a number of European channels on the digital platforms that still use ‘traditional’ teletext, and even the BBC still has its familiar Ceefax title page on digital platforms, even if it does merely say that Ceefax is no longer available, so viewers should instead use the Red Button service.

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The fact is, analogue teletext

services like Ceefax have been deemed to be

old-fashioned and no longer relevant in the internet age.

It’s true that

teletext is hideously old-fashioned these days – in fact it has been for about twenty years. seemed to matter.

But to the millions who used it regularly, that hardly It’s also worth pointing out that Ceefax in particular

very much held its own in the internet age until the enforced move to digital.

The digital Red Button services can potentially do more – they

look a lot better and are more interactive - but they can still be quite slow and glitchy, and they suffer from a complete lack of charm. that, but there is also a lot less actual content.

Not only

For those used to the

bloated nature of teletext, it’s a rather poor show to say the least. The great thing about teletext was that, despite its flaws, it was uncomplicated and generally reliable.

It didn’t need modern graphics and

gimmickry to pull in the punters; it was purely about information.

And in

that respect, it worked brilliantly.

GLYN DAVIES: www.facebook.com/fatglyn2001 ISSUE 5 TRIBE MAGAZINE

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Page 96: Holy Spirited Page 97: Laughter Of Small White Dog Page 98: Nune Page 100: Shepherd Page 101: Summer Ghosts This Page: Cafe Print Opposite: Rusalka Print Page 104: Sunday Page 105: Kissing The Minotaur Bill Lewis stuckism.com/lewis/index.html

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I create upcycled ‘beings’ constructed from found and discarded objects (from natures offerings to the manmade). Due to the nature of working with these materials each piece of work I create is one of a kind. I am fascinated how an object originally designed to fulfil an altogether different purpose can be used or adapted with other materials to form a new ‘being’. I assemble, alter and in cases where I don’t have what I need, I make or model what I require. Half the fun of making these characters is exploring, collecting and researching my finds. I am lucky to live on a farm and being able to rummage around in the sheds to find forgotten items. I also pick up anything that maybe useful from car boot sales, charity shops, beaches, woods and even on the side of the road. I feel I definitely have magpie tendencies, forever looking down and picking bits up! Hayley Kendal hayleykendalsculpture.wordpress.com

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