June 2011
21 posts
Spotted in a closed room at the V&A.
The Ministry of Television requires you to watch: Supermarket Creep
10 reformed paedophiles run an east-midlands supermarket for a month
The Ministry of Television requires you to watch: British National House Party
6 leaders of the British National Party live with some of the people they want deported
Chris Hewish
Future Programming
Possible television shows in an Orwellian dystopia...
All things being equal… Sometimes — not always — I miss the cut-and-thrust loosed when Anonymae challenged me on my old blog Click Opera. Actually, I don’t have to miss it; it’s still going on. Comments are still coming in. Some of them are challenges posed by people who’ve been reading methodically through the CO archives, and have found recurring — and perhaps...
It’s all too rare that I discover a new Japanese music artist I like, but here’s one. Serph sounds like Sakamoto, Cornelius, or The Books. He’s from Tokyo and in his mid-twenties, from what I can gather, and he’s on the Noble label, which also hosts Hirono Nishiyama, aka Gutevolk, and Midori Hirano.
Only five years ago Serph learned to play piano and began composition....
Watching the little rain-bearing Atlantic clouds scuttling across London’s skies this month, bringing with them Britain’s typical rain-sun-rain-sun weather rhythms, I have to remind myself that no matter how much summer rain might be falling here, more is falling in my adopted city of Osaka.
Japan right now is in the midst of the samidare, its season of heavy summer rain. Day...
The Whitechapel Gallery currently has a children’s art room by Alan Kane called Home for Orphaned Dishes. I like this room for a variety of reasons.
“British artist Alan Kane presents a floor-to-ceiling display of a forgotten moment of popular craft revival,” reads the blurb. “The 1960s and ‘70s saw a resurgence in traditional wheel-thrown, glazed stone and slipware...
A review of The Book of Japans (the first one published!) appears in today’s issue of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet:
A VISIT TO THE FUTURE OF JAPAN The author and artist Momus challenges the image of the truth in his new book. VISIONS Twelve Shetlanders visit as many versions of Japan. One by one, we scrutinize their stories, and the idea of what is true is shaken considerably....
Destroyer’s Dan Bejar in The Quietus discusses his obvious but nuanced Momus influence.
The Book of Japans in the window of Pro-qm Berlin. Photos by Andreas Rupprecht.
Mallorca. Crank “gorgeousness” up to 100% then add another 35% for good measure.
My hosts Martin and Tarana.
Playing tree houses with transplanted Glaswegian Martin.
Swinging in the hammock, pretty absorbed by Sebastian Horsley’s autobiography. He’s getting fucked by Jimmy Boyle in this chapter.
Still reading the book while in the sea.
Shall we order the...
We’re in the early days yet, so all this has to be prefaced with “we hope”, but there’s a cinematic Momus musical in the works. It’s provisionally entitled Monsters of Love, and will draw a plot line through about sixteen of my songs, mostly those dealing with bizarre love triangles. The film, to be set in London and Marrakesh, will be directed by Peter Webber...
Me and my brother Mark in 1966 on the cover of Rod and Line, a fishing magazine edited by my dad.
On the deck of the SS France in 1973, emigrating to Canada via New York. I’m imitating the Statue of Liberty, visible behind us.
Eating lunch yesterday at the Barbican, where my brother — Professor of Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary — now has an apartment. In the...
May 2011
28 posts
An epic wander from Paddington to the Serpentine Gallery,
the Science Museum (which I’d never visited before, and which was rather overwhelming, with little brats swarming everywhere),
my old haunts in Chelsea and South Kensington, the Japan Centre and ICA (closed because of budget cuts),
the Architectural Association (near the British Museum),
and finally the degree show...
