1863 Exqusite and necessary forms of Pain. Sophe Calle, International horror and Wallander

Over the past decade there are three series of images of human suffering on a scale which is difficult for most human beings to comprehend except through the circumstances of individuals. The first was those of 9/11. The terror of those in the aircraft which flew into the twin towers, the Pentagon and the fourth where the passengers attempted to overcome their captors knowing that pain and death was likely, coupled with those trapped in the higher floors of the building, especially those who decided to jump, and of the fire, police and other rescue workers who went into those buildings and then realising they were collapsing on top of them,

The second was the Tsunami rush of water which swallowed up populations of towns, villagers and holiday makers.

The third is only emerging now and I find them even more difficult than usual to bear. The firemen standing among the rubble of a community school where their dogs have confirmed what surviving local have said, there is no one left alive here and where those who survived are too shocked and full of grief to do anything of themselves.

Then there are the uplifting stories of the survivors, two children brought out from under the ruins after a week, a young woman who immediate sang a hymn of gratitude to her rescuers and her God. The frustration of the reporters, undertaking the essential task of bringing the horror to the attention of the world so that Government, agencies and you and me with reach into our pockets to provide a little of what will be required and press the authorities to get their act together and provide more and better help than they are have been able to do until now.

What impact will these experiences have on them and all those who are directly helping, the locators of bodies and providers of burials of the unknown reminiscent of the mud swamps of the first world war. This is real suffering and real pain although experienced at a safe distance by the majority able to continue with the rest of our lives as if nothing unusual has taken place.

The work of Sophie Calle, the contemporary concept and performance artist, photographer and mini film maker, which continues to impress me most is Exquisite Pain in which she compares her changing thoughts and feelings about a personal experience which devastated her at the time with that of friends who have experienced personal loss and physical pain of varying intensity and circumstance. The work is a brilliant demonstration of how our thoughts and emotions usually change over time and how in each individual situation it is usual to be overwhelmed and unaffected by everything else that is happening around us, including the pain of others, which objectively may be worse, until a distance develops between the actual moments of our individual experience and we can place the experience in the context of the rest of our lives, before and since, as well as in the context of the lives of others and the history of human and animal kind and our surrounding physical world.

In the same way that some people enjoy films about horror and blood shedding, including recreations of acts of extreme violence, I wallow in work of emotional intensity. I cry with any sentimentality at the cinema and over the past year have discovered the sophisticated grandeur of the live operatic experience of loss, self sacrifice and death with Madam Butterfly, Aida, Il Travatore and Carmen, and of Turandot, but to less extent. Five years ago I rediscovered the emotional fix live drama when the Playhouse reopened in Newcastle, and the Sophie Calle work was made into a theatrical performance without interval. This work had the most influence on how I approached my own project since visiting the Saatchi 100 show at the former County Hall building followed the same day by my first visit to the Tate Modern further along the south embankment of the river Thames. My two visits to the Sophie Calle exhibition at the Whitechapel in December of last year has not had such a dramatic impact as those before but reinforced and reinvigorated my work rather shifting it into a new direction. I returned to the gallery just before Christmas because of wanting to experience the bank of screens in which women performed the letter at the core of Take Care of Yourself, some adding their reactions. I watched what I thought was a set cycle in which one of the continuously playing screens became the centrepiece with sound. I discovered that the order of showing within each cycle changes which pleased me considerably. After the performance of Exquisite Pain at the Playhouse I had attended a short open session with the Director and actors and asked if they varied the order in which the experiences of Sophie’s friends are interjected between the changing account of her own. The reaction for the Director was in effect that I was daft to raise such a suggestion which seemed to me to miss a fundamental point of the work.

My visit in Christmas week also reinforced my view that that three distinct groups of people visit art exhibitions. There are the tourist attraction visitor who goes to the Tate Modern or the Baltic at Gateshead who have had no previous interest in contemporary art or prepared for the particular exhibition(s), who pass through and who may stop at a particular work, usually for seconds before moving on. There are those with an interest in contemporary art, knowing something of the work and the artist before arriving and may spend time in reacting and considering the exhibition and to individual works, but rarely from my experience attempt to take in everything in one session. And then there are the artists usually students and young who go to study as well as experience and enjoy, and where at the Calle, there was more evidence than previously experienced of those sitting somewhere with a note book. It was evident from both visits to the Whitechapel that the majority if not everyone had come with prior knowledge of the work of Sophie Calle, even if they had not experienced the work directly before. Having said this only one other individual appeared to stay experiencing the different screens as they went through a cycle. The average stay was for one or two screen performance. Perhaps having grasped the concept they were not interested in its execution and therefore missed the extent which the same subject, a letter, can be read and interpreted and in this instance performed by singers and musicians as well as read.

Pain was also the subject of the last Wallander of the second series of three dramatizations of the nine novels of Henning Mankell. As with the other works, the subject is familiar, that of revenge killings where there is similarity in the modus operandi but the absence of an link. The killings are all of men where the victims die horribly. One retired man spends his time watching birds, and is impaled when he falls from a tampered viewing area. A florist is kept prisoner, starved and then tied to a tree to die. A jogger is placed in a bag loaded with rocks and dropped into water, with only the face exposed and also three were able to look into the face of the murderer before they departed, Only the fourth is prevented, a railway guard as he is about to be pushed under an arriving train.

Wallander and his team gradually discover that the connecting link is a self help group for women who have experienced violence within a relationship and that the organiser of the group is the likely murderess whose mother had also been a victim and had recently died. And then we come to the significant difference between this work and most others and will become an award winning episode among all three award winning masterpieces of dramatic storytelling scripting and acting.

The special ingredient is the character and life of Wallander and acting of Kenneth Branagh.

In this episode there is the sudden death of his father. Wallander visits his father at the residential home where the man has placed himself aware he is a burden to his family as Alzheimer’s takes stronger hold and he pleads with Wallander to takes him home where his life had some meaning. In one of the brief moments of clarity he talks of the joy of just sitting watching the passing of nature’s time and tells his son that he also should have someone to sit with him. Shortly afterwards, Wallander, while in the midst of the murder inquiry, is told that his father has died and he rushes to find that this is so and is immediately confronted with all the unresolved issues of their relationship, his father’s rejection of him, which was not just illness generated, and his own failure to spend more time with the man, and where the nature of his work and its demands was an important factor, but only one of several factors in the gulf between them, a gulf which one suspects had always been there.

I project this because of my own experience where my biological mother denied my existence in public throughout my life until going into care at the age of 96, when Alzheimer’s had already taken a strong hold and showed no affection during my childhood, never talked of my father or of our subsequent relationship and where in fairness several aspects of my life did live up to her fears about me and that I never measured up to any hopes and good wishes she possessed for me. And this was so until moving her to a residential home in South Shields where she progressed from the sad and angry stage of the disease into a demonstrable loving and happy person retaining the childlike belief in her Catholicism until her last breath, despite the pain and discomfort of her last weeks and days at the local general hospital. I was in the fortunate position of being to visit almost every day staying an average of one hour and although at times as he was unsure of who I was and although our ability to communicate directly ended over time we communicated and stabled a bond stronger than ever before and I had my childhood through her progress into babyhood and felt atonement for my many failures in other relationships and experiences.

This was not so for Wallander and worse was to come when arriving just in time to meet his daughter at the station for the funeral he found that his ex wife was with her at his daughter’s request. This was the first time they had met since the divorce and both communicated the challenge of the situation and he was confronted by his own loneliness and inability to come to terms with what had happened between them, especially when she confirmed that she was happy in the life that had developed since their parting. She has moved on, he had not. The film ends with both returning to his father’s graveside, and he leaves his wedding ring behind.

There are two other memorable magic moments. The first when he calls at the home of someone who had a relationship with one of the murdered men who physically abused her against her wishes. He is attracted to the woman who also reacts in a positive way to his visit as does her young son. On the wall he sees one of his father’s paintings which she inherited when acquiring the apartment. She thinks this is a print and he explains that his father only painted the same scenes with slight variations throughout his life, producing thousands of editions. The moment was wonderful because of the way Kenneth Branagh was able to communicate the pride felt in being able to explain about his father’s work and recent death to someone who appreciated the painting.

However the moment which was one of the most the most remarkable of dramatic portrayals of reality I have experienced during my own lifetime was when Wallander confronts the murderer and who manages to take him prisoner producing a gun with the consequence that colleagues, including a marksman, focus on the murderer. Wallander pleads with the woman to surrender or she will be killed unless she puts down the weapon and for a few seconds it looks as if he is successful as she breaks down in floods of tears in his arms but then turns the weapon on her self.

What had emerged beforehand is that the killing spree had commenced shortly after the mother of the women died and Wallander having just experienced the death of his father knew from his recent experience which included, meeting his wife after a period since their divorce that it can trigger extremes of behaviour with some children experience relief and a sense of freedom where others are devastated because of the closeness and bonds which had existed. There was also empathy for the murderess built up during the episode as we learnt of the extent to which those killed who had physically violated their partners, some assaulting a succession of women. Branagh was playing someone whose work and conviction was to apprehend the guilty and bring them to the justice of the society which employed him for such a purpose. At the same time Branagh also conveyed a man who believed he understood why the woman had behaved as she had. She would still have to face action of society against her and indeed punishments for actions for whatever the trigger and justification, the killings were premeditated and horrific involving torture and infliction of intense pain, but he also wanted her to have the opportunity for atonement and redemption. The level of acting was extraordinary.

We all need to experience both kinds of pain, that of the actual relayed and that of the drama and the performance. We do not need to experience directly and many people’s experience is limited in their lifetime although I suspect those who never experience directly are small in number. Because of this there is need to prepare for the eventuality and where through the reporting and experiencing in dramatic form we are able cope better when it happens to us and to show compassion and provide support to others when it happens to them.

1836 From Seraphine to Sophie Calle

In the history of human kind, let alone the universe, it is a very short road from the village of Arsy and the town of Senlis on the Oise in northern France where Seraphine Louis was born in 1864, to the birth place of Sophie Calle in 1953, a couple of years before I left school and had visited the local reference library to read the official War Crimes reports on the concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. Interestingly for someone who is precise and expansive I can find no published record of where Calle she was born.

(On a visit to the Science Museum a couple of days later I was also struck in the area on energy with the information that the sun will lose its power to sustain life on earth in about five billion years which is nearly as long as it appears to have already been in existence).

Seraphine Louis was the daughter of a manual working family who was sent to the local convent to undertake laundry work at the age of 17 after being a shepherdess and which is likely to account for her need to be outdoors and of trees which she loved to touch and talk to. From her work at the Convent of the Sisters of Providence in Clermont she developed the kind of fundamental Catholicism and adoration for the Virgin Mary which so dominated the life of my mother, to the extent that despite the totality of my mother’s senility and disabilities when she approached her death aged 100.75, her catholic faith remained evident to me as it did to her priest.

When Seraphine was 37 she commenced work for middle class families in the city of Senlis although according to the Film of her life which opened in the UK on the Friday afternoon of the day I also visited Sophie Calle at the Whitechapel. It was a further decade before Seraphine undertook cleaning for the garden flat tenant of one of these families, and one tenant by amazing good fortune was the Parisian art gallery dealer owner and collector Wilhelm Uhde, a German born pacifist Jewish homosexual born in what is now Poland, facts which were to have a great impact on the future of Seraphine

It is not known from the film when and why she commenced to paint her distinctive individual style of paintings which all have a tree like symmetry of floral displays in the most vivid and at times lurid of colours and which the films indicates she produced herself from pots of basic white using animal blood from the butchers for her red and algae from the river bed although these are guesses because she never revealed how she did it.

In the film one of her employers learns that Seraphine painted and asked to see a canvass which she then ridiculed because of its primitivism and abstraction. However the employer kept the work which was seen after the woman discovered that the tenant was the art expert and arranged a dinner party at which the local cultural worthies displayed their ignorance and contempt for the contemporary art of the day. The film suggests that it was only at this point did Wilhelm discover that his cleaner was the painter. According the Wikipedia he then became aware she had accumulated a body of work although in the film she only showed him a few of her small works painted on board and he urged her to work hard at improving her technique as well as being impressed by what she had created to-date. He bought her work and provide the support which commenced to lift her horizons as a mature single woman who had used all her earnings to buy materials to paint which she did at night by candlelight. The film also suggests that she was generally regarded as being “soft in the head” by her employers and the community in which she lived because she was on her own, appeared to have not family or friends apart from occasional visits to see the nuns and her devotions at the local church and spent hours in the countryside in all weathers, touching and talking to trees. The film states that she painted having been called by God to do so. She possessed the compulsion to do something regardless of whether she obtained recognition and wealth and did so at the expense of everything else other than working to buy materials. If her enthusiasm had been for alcohol, drugs or what have she would be said to have become addicted in a negative way and

Unfortunately just when she had found someone who believed in her work, the first World War occurred and Wilhelm had to flee from Senlis where understandably he was no longer welcome as the German army advanced, and where he would have been shot by the Germans if they had found him continuing to live there. The film suggests that Seraphine retrieved her work from the flat as well as rescuing his diary. He promised to return to see her but it was not until 1927 when Wilhelm returned to France and was living at Chantilly that he went back to find her. It is not clear to me if he could have returned to France before he did given his views and interests.

In the film it is stated that he assumed she had died until seeing a newspaper note of an exhibition of local artists and decided to see if any of her works were being shown and only then realised she and her painting had not only survived but progressed.

Wilhelm trained as lawyer and studied art history in Italy and was an early collector of the works of Picasso who painted his portrait in 1909. It was his patronage that made Henri Rousseau and in 1928 he showed the work of Seraphine in Paris along with that of Rousseau, Boucant and Camille Bombois who together became known as the Sacred Heart painters.

It was the juxtaposition of Seraphine the naive Catholic primitive and me, Colin the naive, former Catholic, primitive contemporary creative and Sophie Calle the now worldly exhibitionist and voyeur which has and such a profound effect as did the interaction between the work of many of those exhibiting in the Saatchi 100 and the Tate Modern in the Spring of 2003 when I knew not just what I wanted to do but how to do it.

The impact of the patronage on life of Seraphine was also profound in two contrasting ways. She commenced to paint large work on canvass two metres high and with access to the whole range of prepared paints was able to progress her work with paintings which overwhelm the senses and which will no doubt be shown once more in London following the release of the film there, a film which has already won seven awards at the French Academy including best picture and can be expected to do well as the foreign language Oscar film next year as well as the Baftas.

In the film Seraphine also moved into a bigger flat which she filled with pots and pans and silverware and then bought an expensive hand made formal white wedding dress which the film does not attempt to explain leaving the audience to decide if this was for wearing at her exhibition of work in Paris, or a symbolic dedication to the Virgin Mary and God, (non Catholics may not be aware that Nuns dress in bridal white when they enter an order following on from their white dresses at the first Holy Communion)

It is at this point that the role of Wilhelm becomes questionable at best and in my view disgraceful. When her neighbours become concerned about her going about the town in her wedding dress and distributing her silverware, they lock her up as mad and there was no one immediately on hand to speak for her. I was reminded that humanity throughout the ages, especially the established and ruling religions, have always persecuted those regarded as different and tried to silence, often killing those who challenge the existing order and way of doing things

In the film her psychosis progress to the extent she fails to recognise Wilhelm who funds the provision of a private room with access to the open air and countryside. In fairness to him he also was badly affected by the Wall Street Crash and could not keep up with her extravagance including the desire to buy a house like his and a car. However what is not clear if any effort was made to provide her with the material to paint and why did he tell everyone that she had died in 1934 when in fact she lived on until 1942. It is appreciated that as the control and suppression of the Jews became known, even if knowledge of their extermination was more restricted to officialdom and to the military throughout Europe, Wilhelm had to go into hiding in Southern France dying in 1947 back in Paris. Why on return and discovering that she been buried in a common grave did he not provide a new one for example? He had continued to show her work when in the asylum in an exhibition in 1932 and after stating she had died with exhibitions in Paris 37-38, followed by Zurich and New York, also in 1942 and in 1945 after she had died in a show of only her work. I was left feeling that that as her talent for painting grew she was abandoned by all those who could have helped her. I do take into account the barbarism of the care of the mentally ill which has stained medical practical for generations.

I rounded off my day by Eating spicy chicken wings in a quiet corner of St Pancras station after buying them from M and S, and as I was leaving noted two young men tucking into one of their large trifle bowls with similar enthusiasm to my devouring of the chicken. I had intended to call in at an attractive Christmas decorated Inn discovered on the way to the Brunswick centre but on exiting found it heaving. An Irish chain pub nearby was also packed out by early Friday evening revellers. I had not been to the Curzon Renoir at the Brunswick centre before and which appears to be an excellent venue for quality International films. They have a collection of DVD’s of previous successes which can also be obtained through their catalogue. I enjoyed a coffee before the performance but had to complain that the theatre had been placed in total darkness,

Saturday did not begin well as I quickly discovered that the Cross Thames line between London Bridge and St Pancras was down with the Circle and District Line and most of the Jubilee, Northern Kline Trains were not stopping at Kings Cross as individual stations such as Warren street were closed. There was chaos. The first port of call was St Martin’s in the Fields, the most famous non Cathedral church in the UK because of its location to one side of Trafalgar Square. It is technically the parish church of the Royal Family. It is also known for its open door policy towards the homeless following the work of Rev Dick Shepherd who pioneered charitable work in the first part of the last century Between 2006 and 2008 £36 million was spent on cleaning the building and creating new public facilities and parish and social care facilities which included a row of buildings to the north of the church. The large Crypt is now a restaurant cafe where jazz concerts are held and the church holds several concerts a week during lunchtimes and at night using candle light. It is also the London Brass rubbing centre. My interest was to enquire if tickets were available for the evening concert of Baroque music and they were, before walking across the bridge and along the South Bank of the Thames to Tate Modern.

This was my first visit this year. And as with my visit to the Saatchi in the summer for the USA show, it was a disappointment with nothing creating a new sense of wow. Most of the film space had warnings about nudity which appears to have become an issue although it is not surprising as the Tate appears to be a place for Tourists to visit and for curious parents to take their children along with them. I was struck by the difference between the two sets of visitors to the Tate Modern and the Whitechapel.

There was one work in which I did engage, by Robert Therrien from Los Angeles in which he had crammed into a small space, said to be the space he had used in his studio, some 888 objects all in red many practical, radio telephone, grill and that many of the objects had a significance in relation to his own past or that of his friends. It was this aspect which attracted my interest because too often the creative is seeking to cause an effect, to attract attention and the work has little to do, if anything with the life led or personal past experience. The redness was also commanding. I am not dismissing the rest of the displays which included several appreciated on past visits, but there was little I would want to live with or had direct significance to my own past experience or current work.

I enjoyed a sandwich and tea overlooking St Paul’s but came over tired and spent the rest of the afternoon lounging in a comfy chair at the Royal Festival Hall until it was time to brave the heavy rain in search of somewhere to eat. The crypt of St Martins was an obvious option but there was only limited choice of mass produced food kept warm. An exploration further along St Martin’s Lane led to La Roche a Lebanese Moroccan restaurant where a two course meal with wine will set you back £25 a head. However it was well worth it as I enjoyed some beautifully tender lamb with petite vegetables in a spiced sauce cooked in a colourful topped ceramic earthenware pot accompanied with rice and followed a delicious apple strudel. The wine was an unspecified house red.

St Martins is not an ideal place for music in that only those at the aisle or in the front rows can see the musicians and the seats are church pews although there was plenty of room for a bag underneath and for coats to be folded on the wide ledge used for hymnals. Yet it seemed ideal for the programme of Baroque music. Some of the work was familiar notably the Air on a G String of Bach and 4th Brandenburg Concerto when I have a double Long Play of the series and there was also Spring from the Vivaldi Four Seasons. I did not know the Telemann Recorder Concerto performed Martin Feinstein or the Pachelbel Canon and Fugue, Vivaldi’s Concerto for four Violins or his Spranino Concerto, but for me the I enjoyed most the Bach Double Violin Concerto with soloists Catherine Manson and Marianna Szcucs.

It is decades since visiting the Science Museum which since the films about Dinosaurs has been overshadowed by the adjacent Natural History Museum. I had been to the Victoria and Albert across the street earlier in the year and had been tempted to go again. Many of the displays are long standing especially the history of Flight and of Maritime developments. I am likely to have viewed the flying bomb rocket before but it still brought back the fear of childhood. The history of medicine has never appealed but 100 years of psychology usually would have but not at that moment. There was tremendous public interest in everything to do with space and the development of energy sources. I was delighted to see an Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter which I tried to sell in the late 1950’s. I cannot remember what happened to the one which I bought for myself as later I acquired a black Silverite in a black case. There was also one of the early adding machines with the fading paper print roll. What interested me most was the early nature of many of fields of research and study which then changed all our lives. I noted that when men played around with electricity servants and children were treated with small shocks because it was though this would help to keep them in their place.

There has been thought given to attracting and keeping the interest of young people to science and everything is geared to provide young people with interest and well as facilities. There is a special large area for parties and refectory type tables on the ground floor cafe restaurant as well as those for two or four, and the food looked well prepared and appetizing. There was also a picnic area and one large area given over to hands on experiments and tests where children were having a great time. At the area of flight there was a conducted tour aimed at young children who were engaged throughout in various ways.

The closures of the Tube meant that everyone appeared to be queuing for the only direct bus route at Victoria, the C1. While people did get out at the V and A marked stop and then at the South Kensington Station where there is a tunnel to the Natural History and Science Museums and which used by those going or coming from the Royal Albert Hall at the top of the Road. As the bus goes to Sloane Square and Harrods at Knightsbridge it was full of shoppers as well as some going on to Earls Court Olympia where there are a number of halls as well as the conference centre, and where throughout the year there are trade and consumer shows, sporting events from the Horse of the Year to chess championships and music such as the Annual Brit Awards. I would be taken as a school child with the aunties to see the Ideal Home Exhibition each year where I enjoyed going through the show houses filled with the latest appliances and gadgets, watching the free displays of things to make life easier and the free samples.

It became time for a Sunday lunch and having just missed the C1 back as more rain came down disregarded by the dozens of skaters in the open air ice rink close to the station, I opted to take a bus to Marble Arch at the edge of Hyde Park where there was both another Ice rink, one of six in and around London and a monster large wheel, cross over the space where there are no memorials to the Australians who died in the World Wars and then take the bus to Victoria from there down the back of Buckingham Palace and passed the former officers of the National Coal Board to Victoria Station where there were was a pub restaurant one end of the food court. It was here that on the spur I crossed over to the far side and discovered that the Cafe Rouge are having an excellent two or three course reasonable priced meal which despite small portions is nevertheless excellent value given the quality of the food and the pleasant ambience where there is no pressure to serve everyone as fast as possible to attract further customers. I had a terrine de poulet with four pieces of baguette, a crepe filled with vegetables and a green salad rather than French fries, followed by a mousse aux chocolat and accompanied with a large glass of Merlot followed by black coffee £15. The new Cafe Rouge at Gateshead has the same menu for servings from 12 until 5 and there are vouchers for 2 main menu dishes for £12.50 in the evenings and I received a 50% off mail meal voucher the former expires in December while the latter is for the New Year. The meal made up for the dreadful weather and it also became cold to freezing.

However on return I discovered how the chain is able to provide quality food at low prices. Until October it was paying staff below the national minimum wage and using the tips to make the difference. Now it is required to pay the way and for tips to be distributed. Staff are asked to put the tips on the bill and then a 10% deduction is made by the management for administrative costs. This will affect my going again but I will test out the one at the Metro centre especially if it starts to show the relays of opera and other live performances when it opens in a few days time.

1835 Talking to Sophie Calle

I did not know Sophie Calle until the autumn of 2006 when in my sixty seventh year. I regret this alongside my failure to understand performance and concept art until making the effort in the summer of 2002 after the opening of the Baltic contemporary art space on Tyneside and seeing the film on the life of Jackson Pollock. It was not until a visit to London a few weeks later that I bought the Nikos Stangos editing book Concepts of Modern Art and the last two chapters Christopher Reed on Modernism and Identity and Roberta Smith on Conceptual Art changed my life in a more fundamental way than the discovery in 1999 that my father had become the Catholic Vicar General of Gibraltar.

I do not mean know in the biblical sense, although my accumulated experience suggests that we can know more of an individual through their work than by living with them. What we know is our interaction with the time period of their work or our period of direct contact and even where another discloses their thoughts, internal images and sensations, it is always an edited experience and with only limited disclosure of their subconscious for those able to interpret with some accuracy.

In 2006 I had not been to contemporary theatre, or out to much else between 2003 and 2006, fully engaged as I was in the creation of the installation then called 101 Public and Private Art and now 100.75 Public and Private Art. until the redesigned Newcastle Playhouse was open again. On the 27th of September 2006 I visited to new second space at the theatre to see Exquisite Pain, a performance art work lasting two and a half hours without interruption and created by someone called Sophie Calle. I liked the old second space at the Playhouse which I previously visited usually to see actors of the Royal Shakespeare company because of the intimacy between the players and the audience less than 100 souls sitting within the performance space. Now the space was on the ground floor and could become an additional back space to the main space and auditorium, to as in the instance of this first use as a separate space a second auditorium with perhaps 200 uncomfortable seats in a traditional single slope to the theatre. I had not made an immediate note but written about the experience for my AOL Blog a month later 26.10.2006 and which I then published in a revised form here on as 31 in March 2007 and then on Google this year as 1031.
I had used Jokerman script for the original piece.“26.10.2006 .The use of Jokerman script for Exquisite Pain (27.09.2006 Newcastle Playhouse) is at one level appropriate. It is not a play but a performance art work where the setting of a seated audience for two and a half hours is inappropriate, one needed to be able to walk about” and in my instance join in.

“12.03.2007 if you have not been to the theatre to experience acting for sometime then Exquisite Pain is not the work to go and see. It is not a play but performance art using exceptionally talented actors. (I can say this because I also watched them perform a total theatre experience of the history of The World in Pictures, two days later).

You sit with increasing discomfort for two and a half hours without interruption. The discomfort is physical and emotional and is an appropriate way to experience the work. I would have preferred to have walked about a bit but keeping within listening distance.

This autobiographical work, previously performed by the artist and available in book form, is by Sophie Calle, born in Paris in 1953. In 1985 her lover and older man failed to meet her as arranged in New Delhi midway between where she had been for several months and experience, rather than traumatised and was able to work through the disappointment, humiliation, and victim guilt, because she was a creative using photo, memorabilia and words, but kept a record of how her perception of the event changed through linear time.”

“26.10.2006 The performance consists of one person telling the story of dealing with a traumatic experience and how the view of that experience changes over time, one blames oneself, where she had previously lived, She was devastated by the one blames the other person one gets angry at being affected so much yet because one wanted and hopes for resolution reconciliation one clings the hope for a different outcome because that it is a possibility but the reality is that when you compare such an experience with the experience of others you realise that however painful, it is insignificant to the realities of the succession of tragedies and horrors of others which are told in a dead pan and sometimes humorous way.”

13.03.2007 Sophie Calle could have just created a performance work in which she recounted the same experience over the subsequent days, weeks and months, reporting and observing changes in detail, consideration, feelings, attitude and judgement. This could have been a complete work. She did not.

On her return to Paris, she asked a group of friends to answer the question, "When did you most suffer?" Their stories of pain, each of them accompanied by a photograph, interplay with Calle's own story and daily reflections—"It is now seventy-five days since the man I love left me"—creating a testament to the heartache of romantic rejection. 130 illustrations, 71 in colour available through Amazon.”

30.11.2009. I write this on the train to Newcastle. Sophie appears to see herself first as a voyeur albeit a self controlled one me thinks, and an exhibitionist second. Both words tend to be regarded in only a pejorative way by the popular media and have conditioned the general public accordingly. Both require courage whether undertaken in a public or private way.

“27.09.2006 the university car park was free tonight, I usually pay £2. I enjoyed the salad and timed everything much better. It is the right thing to do to take the car although it would be sensible to work out the motorway way route back. It is ridiculous that you cannot enter the theatre at this level with the choice if steep steps or walking around the theatre up the slope.”

“28.02.2007. The revised travel arrangements to the Playhouse and other evening outings to Newcastle are now working well. I still visit my mother and then take the car to the Hewarth short stay car park adjacent to the taxi rank and metro station. I eat the picnic meal in the car and then continue the journey by metro train. On the way there is now a sign which suggests it might be possible to enter the theatre directly from the car park. It is.”

30.11.2009 The University has now built its main public reception building on the car park and there is now a grand staircase entrance by the side of the building which leads to the space with the splendid university student union building on one side and the Playhouse Theatre on the other. I assume one can no longer take the car close the theatre anymore but have not taken time to explore this further or been to the theatre for a year.

“27.09.2006 this is my first experience of the new second theatre space. For on the Town when both spaces were combined the audience sat on tiered seating the width of the second space facing into the main auditorium and banked seating. Previously we sat on similar seating in a semi circle around the stage which I like to call eyeball theatre. Now there is conventional tiered seating with not much space to move legs unless you sit on an aisle or the front row where you will feel part of the performance. I chickened out and sat mid row, fortunately one vacant seat so there was some manoeuvrability. My ticket was free as part of a five main theatre subscription packaged. Many in the audience were students. Unsurprisingly there was a plea for funds at the end and I decide to give £10 which is slightly more than the average of £7 requested. Free programme included.”

“13.03.2007. The incorporation of the stories of the experiences of Calle's friends was inspirational. Each story communicates an aspect of physical and emotional pain but the accumulation of experience helps to put her experience into perspective

At the end of the World in Pictures chorus makes the valid point that however much the average member of the audience enjoys, appreciates, is moved or challenged by the event, it will become submerged under layers of new experiences of varying intensity and significance.”

26.10.2006 There was also an after performance session with the two actors, and the company director chaired by a local cultural figure. I had only 'discovered' this extraordinary company through the internet during the afternoon beforehand and had become so interested that I abandoned my work programme. The amazing aspect is that the core actors had been together throughout their working lives having come together at university. At the discussion I made a clanger by concertinaing this time, having misinterpreted an aspect of the internet information. I also wanted to know if the order in which the stories of the friends are recounted is changed according performance. It is not although if the work was mine I would have included the variations”- to see if by doing so my view of what had happened to me, changed 30.11.2009.

“13.03.2007. Calle's work and the performance by the Forced Entertainment company is at the core of my work and confirms that what I am doing is only original in its particular form, at least I hope that this is the position, but the concepts are already aspects of the work of professional contemporary creative of international reputation. However I do not regret only entering back through the portal of my occupational dimension of four decades into my first period of full time creative endeavour. Now I have a lot to say even if I continued to be limited in the means of expression.”

29.11.2009. I have met Sophie Calle again two days ago. The experience was unplanned because at the last moment I had a free day in London and had read Time Out, looking first at the cinema listing and discovering that a film about the Seraphine of Senlis was to open at midday, decided to attend the first performance the Curzon Renoir in Brunswick Square. I then looked at the major space exhibitions which are listed alphabetically but on the third page under Critic‘s choice there was her name Sophie Calle, announcing that she was revealing more of herself at the Whitechapel Gallery from 11am. This became my priority visit until an evening engagement and I quickly worked out how to get to Aldegate East which is behind the City area where I had worked 50 years ago unsuccessfully trying to sell office machines for an Italian company and on a road to Stratford from Tower Bridge which I used several times a year over a period of several years.

I should have arrived for 11 but made a mess of the travel as a consequence of devoting insufficient time to learning the route from East Croydon Station. As will be evident to anyone reading any of my writing I have a learning disability which prevents the immediate recollection of grammar and vocabulary and to ensure that I remember anything and although I spell check, reread and revise any writing, usually once, I continue to find errors, sometimes rendering a sentence incomprehensible. I sometimes leave my work uncorrected.

30.11 2009. For some reason about which I am no longer sure I took the train to London Bridge rather than direct to St Pancras and this resulted in having to climb the stairs at London bridge over platforms and then down to the platform, where fortunately the train from East Croydon to Bedford arrived a few minutes later. I had not lost time but had the additional effort. However what I should have done is get off at Farringdon and take the Hammersmith and City Line to Aldegate East from there. Instead I continued to St Pancras and then had to walk the full length the station to the booking hall at the front and to the Hammersmith and City line which is one the same platform at the circle and district lines. As I was to discover on my way to King Cross station later that evening there is now a new booking hall between the far end of St Pancras and the present side entrance into Kings Cross and which was opened to the public for the first time on Sunday. I do not know if this will also cut the distance to the Hammersmith and city line.

In any event having arrived at the St Pancras platform trains came and departed along the other routes for 15 to 20 minutes before one of two trains in succession going towards Aldegate East were announced. Thus I had extended the journey time by half an hour and it was after 11 before I arrived at the art space and was pleasantly surprised to find that the station entrance and exist is part of the gallery building and that for several years I had driven along the road on my way from Wallington via Tower Bridge to Stratford. I also quickly realised it was in the area where the British Olivetti City office had been located and where each day accompanied with other members of the selling team we had made our way to a bacon roll and coffee breakfast hideaway from the supervisor.

I m just have the address somewhere which I hope to find one day, although the breakfast cafe may be long gone as much of this part of London.

Petticoat Lane is as always but with little evidence of customers on the Friday. From Wikipedia I gather that on Sunday morning there can be as many a thousand stalls covering the wider area and while tourists visit it remains primarily a place to go for clothing. I was struck by two neighbouring shops which specialised in formal suits and dresses for young people, including waistcoats. I assume this is for formal occasions as I cannot recall seeing a child in such attire. There were also two stalls/shops selling luggage at very low prices. Nearby is Brick Lane and its market of fruit and vegetable and which is the home of the Bangladeshi community in this part of London an area previously occupied by Irish and then Jewish immigrants. On my explore I discovered Toynbee Hall the original University Settlement Hall in which those interested in social work could provide services to the underclass in the local community and which continues to this day in an area now overshadowed by the Gherkin and other City Towers and the encroachment of corporations and hotel chains. Lenin visited Toynbee Hall and Clem Atlee worked there as did Lord Profumo who devoted his life there after the Keeler Scandal.

Later after the visit to the Whitechapel Gallery I found an area of street seating close to the East London Mosque which can accommodate 4500 people, next to which is also the London Muslim Centre, which has facilities for several thousand, for the purpose of eating the prepared salad brought with the previous day. Nearby was the London Bell Centre workshops and a little way further along I passed a small group of beautifully attire young Muslim women standing talking and giggly oblivious that they had stopped across the road from the Nag’s Head Gentleman’s club out of wish an Asian gentleman was exiting. I wonder if the various Royals and national politicians who have visited the Mosque and centre noted the incongruity of local authority planning approval being given for such a facility in this neighbourhood.

I knew of the Whitechapel gallery but had no knowledge of the nature of its space which is not surprising as after closure it reopened only earlier this year having doubled in size following expenditure of £13.5million. Having deposited by bag and resisted the temptation to visit the book shop I entered the new ground floor gallery space behind the new restaurant to be confronted with the Nelson Rockefeller 1955 commissioned tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica which for the past couple of decades has hung outside the Security Council meeting room at the United Nations building in New York. The tapestry is set against a blue backcloth the significance of which was to emerge in the installation notes.

Around 1975 on my visit to the South of France I experience a major work of Picasso on War and Peace in a church at Vallauris where Picasso lived from 1948 to 1955. I cannot remember when I acquired the large block reproduction of Guernica which now hangs in the room in which spend most of my days working and experiencing.

The reason for the presence of the tapestry at the Whitechapel is the work of London based Polish creative visual artist Goska Macuga who is known for the presentation as installations historical objects and documents. In 2003 a blue curtain was hung over the tapestry as Colin Powell delivered his speech on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Goska has placed his Guernica against a backcloth of Blue in from of which there is a large table similar to that used by the Security Council but with inlay of documents which reflect keys moments in the history of the Whitechapel where there have been meetings and discussions and where groups are invited to do likewise during the year long presentation of the installation. What was new to me is that the original Guernica was displayed at the Whitechapel in 1939 after it had been on display at the 1937 Paris Exhibition. Moreover Clem Atlee had addressed a meeting before the picture a large reprint of the photograph of the event was the centrepiece of a newspaper produced for the 2009 event and which I fear I mistakenly put out with the now free London Evening Standard. I will obtain another if still available when I revisit just before Christmas.

Before entering the ground floor space which is devoted Ms Calle’s Take Care of Yourself I stayed alone in the Zilkha Auditorium where Inci Eviner is showing perpetually her film Harem 2009 based on a 19th century engraving which looks more like the inside of a lunatic asylum than the sexual playthings of a Sultan of Constantinople. The film has a hypnotic quality despite the contrived grainy effect.

It was then I was ready to meet Sophie Calle once more although the front stage was occupied by a mural of video screens where a score of the 107 women she contacted from an opera singer to rock artist responded on film interpreting an email received from a partner breaking up with her. The performance are also on a continuous loop but switch between them for the sound and which is the English speaking Premier of the work which she took to the Venice Biennale in 2007, the same year that Tracey Emin occupied the British Pavilion. Around the walls are large format responses to this most extraordinary of emails, including from the chief of police and psychiatrist I ordered an edition of the book on the work while travelling back to South Shields today.

I found copies of all the official guides to the British leading participants to the Biennale on one of the top gallery floors together with photos and information including a group photograph at a lunch which represent a history of British art with Henry Moore and JMW Turner, Ben Nicholson and John Tunnard at the opening in 1948, Graham Sutherland 1952 Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud and Reg Butler in 54, John Bratby 56 Victor Passmore in 60 Bridget Riley 68 David Hockney 78 Anthony Gormley and Anish Kapoor. Damien Hirst and Julian Opie 93, and the single contributors over the past decade with Mark Wallinger, Chris Orfili, Gilbert and George before Tracey and the video installation Steve McQueen this year.

I was then ready for Calle’s Talking to Strangers, inviting people to use her bed and then photograph them as well as asking resident’s of the Bronx to take her to their favourite place.

Seven times before my life was fundamentally affected and reshaped by unplanned events or unexpected experience and the combination events last Friday has created the eight with the work of Sophie Calle pivotal. As with that day in the Spring of 2003 when I was exhilarated by the experience of the Saatchi 100 and followed this with another first to the Tate Modern, Friday got better and better with my visit to the film on the life of Seraphine of Senlis. For this bitterly cold night on the return home I am more than content to go to bed talking to Sophie Calle.

1826 Parr and Kimsooja at the Baltic, Carmen tickets and World's Great Voices

For the superstitious Friday 13th is a day to cautious but for me this occasion its has proved a brilliant day, unlike two weeks ago when my car was hit in the rear corner by an accelerating bus.

I had planned to be up and away to Newcastle earlier than as happened although I had woken early and lingered awake in bed, as I thought. There was a cloudless blue sky. no wind and the temperature favourable for being out and about. I took the loan car to Heworth and should have taken a 2 hour ticket for £1.10 but with careless thinking put in the £1.80 for four hours at around 10.30 am.

The mission was to go to the Tyneside Film Theatre for the opening day of the sale of tickets for the remaining operas in the New York Metropolitan Live relay season in HD. Unlike the other cinemas in the chain the theatre had only sold tickets for the first three operas and then decided on its approach in the light of the demand which has been a great surprise and made them think their role in the cultural life of one of great cities of the world.

The lady in the queue before me was purchasing two of the advertised full rest fo season tickets, my Christmas present she said. The Lady with the other assistant was buying three single tickets for the next three operas for herself and was taking renewing her membership as was I about to do. She had not been before and clearly and been persuaded by word of mouth. The advantage of the Membership is two free tickets and £1 off seats in the Classic circle or 75p elsewhere plus 10% in the coffee room or one for the two bars. I bought tickets for Carmen in the Classic circle at the front and for Simon Boccanegra and Hamlet in the stalls. I then treated myself to a large coffee at the street level bar where I was joined at the next table by two young men each with laptops.

I then decided not to waste the paid for car parking and take a bus to the Quayside and visit the Baltic Contemporary art house walking through the shopping centre and Marks and Spencer’s along the way. I decided to check out the revised Green Market which used be a large areas of stalls but has now replaced where Argos used be. There is only room for six stall type outlets and only three of these are occupied with the available space used by the coffee bar. It is sometime since I have visited the Granger indoor market down street which has the traditional fruit and vegetables and other food stalls and various goods under a large roof area. Along the high level passage way there is a large stall selling very kind of calendar from pop stars to city views and the 365 day one good saying a day or picture.

There was one of the special buses at the terminus and I was the only passenger for half the short journey which nevertheless provides an excellent view of city centre. Newcastle is one of my favourite cities in the UK with Durham and York and along with Oxford and Chester and Brighton.

Newcastle is not pretty pretty, or quaint with dramatic vistas such as Durham or the colleges of Oxford or Cambridge, another I enjoyed a two week stay on a management course in the early seventies. It has a great river best viewed from the Baltic observations platforms or the Sage Concert Halls or the centre of High level Bridge. There is also the attractive 1830 neo classical facades of Granger and Dobson from the Monument of Earl Grey all the way down of the Tyne quayside voted the best looking street in England by BBC Radio 4 listeners

Newcastle has many faces and remains primarily the commercial centre for the whole of the Northeast of England. It had also become the a key part of Higher Education with 50000 university places within the city competing as a place to study and play with the collegiate Durham and the junior riverside developments of Sunderland and Gateshead.

It was always a place of culture and general entertainment with theatres and musical halls giving way to the cinema and the disco bar and nightclub and more recently the International standard concert halls. There are various major art galleries and museums and between 50 and 100 attractive Inns as well as a similar number of international restaurants, coffee and sandwich shops, tea rooms, and fast food takeaways. For general clothes and other shopping goods the Gateshead Metro is superior to Eldon Square unless you want expensive high class goods where there are specialist stores and of course Fenwicks.

I exited the bus at the Law Courts and had to scurry over the Millennium bridge as the warning bell sounded for the midday raising. This always attracts an audience for a process which takes a good ten minutes each way. As the visit was unplanned I had not checked the exhibitions but along the end of the former Flour Mill building full length banners declared a Damien Hirst showing of his Pharmacy alongside a work supporting the 175 year life of the Newcastle University Medical School. On the main length of the building there was a giant post saying vote for the Miners or a similar slogan.

I have been constantly disappointed by the building and the package of exhibitions until today. I am not saying that I did not experience WOW by individual displays on almost every visit. Today there was a more general WOW although I have already seen the Hirst at the former Saatchi and I decided against the Malcolm McLaren pay for show described as musical paintings restricted to over 16’s because of its nudity.

Instead I took the lift to the 5th level having never visited the restaurant at the sixth where a three course meal with coffee excluding wine will cost around £30 per head. From the 5th you look out across the raised Millennium Bridge to the other bridges across the Tyne and up the hill to where Newcastle St James‘s football stadium, one of the world‘s great stadiums, now dominates the skyline from all round the city.

It is also possible to look into the 4th level exhibition area, a space in full darkness except for four large cinema size screens on each of the side walls. Korean Kim Sooja has filmed crowds in eight cities approaching the motionless figures of a Seamstress, in London, New York, Mexico City Delhi, Lagos, Cairo, Tokyo and Shanghai. In most of the cities people go by without giving the woman attention or look bemused except in Lagos where everyone looks and speculates. What struck me was that London faces have become more cosmopolitan than New York. The film was on when I arrived and sat to watch a complete showing and was then repeated again so I moved on missing the showing of a Laundry Woman Yamun river India. The seamstress stands Performance art on its heads with the artist motionless while everyone else is moving.

I then enjoyed the two floor exhibition of the work of Martin Parr and quickly came to conclusion that we have similar artistic souls. The vast spaces of the second floor are covered wall upon wall with his photographs and montages of post cards and other memorabilia and there are tables of his art books gathered with care from around the world. Probably the most interesting for the casual visitor are his collections of souvenirs from Thatcher and Bush years, the macabre 9.11 and Saddam Hussein mementos and collection of commemorative plates from long since defunct coal pits about their defiance and role in the Miner’s strike.

On the ground floor there are his latest collection of glossy colour photographs of those engaged in luxury living ranging from contemporary Bright Young Things, looking and behaving just as silly as their predecessors and bosomy matrons in ill fitting couture frocks including the Northumbrian Plate, the Pitman’s derby here in the North East, the Dubai Art Fair, the Beijing Motor Show and the Millionaires Fair in Moscow. No recession evident for these people.

One of joys as far as art shops go in art galleries and show houses is that at the Baltic. In addition tot eh usual collection of books I would love to own and look at least once there art designed goods and games and plenty of stuff for young people. There appeared to be a problem with the bus to Newcastle from this of the river so I took the one to Gateshead Interchange and eventually found my way to Wilkinson where I picked up some black albums for creative work and their own indigestion tables for a third of the usual price. At Tesco there was fruit and vegetables fresh and in tins and more of the three packs of meat for £10 deal, some Chinese style chicken things and piece of unsmoked gammon. I remembered the toilet rolls, the Milk and the biscuit crackers but then forgot the fruit and nut cereal so I called in at Lidl’s where I bought some inexpensive salami to go with the rolls bought at Tesco.

It was mid afternoon on return and waiting for me was the World’s Great voices five disk set originally issued by the Readers Digest but now available at a fraction of the price from EBay and Amazon. I could not wait to listen, abandon the writing and game playing for the rest of the day into the early following with the exception of the third episode of Spooks which if anything exceeds the dramatic brilliance of previous seasons. Alas when after midnight the result of the first new style Euro Lottery ticket draw announced I had just one star number and one other on one of the three tickets. For once I was not that disappointed as I had in my possession one of the priceless greatest gifts, the musical voice.