Birdsong at the Barbican
April 2010ZANI - Celeste Boursier – Mougenot
I’ve never heard of this bloke but I understand he’s a French trained musician and composer and previous installations have included vacuum cleaners with harmonicas attached, so I just had to pop along to see a flock of Zebra Finches playing electric guitars at The Curve, Barbican Centre to satisfy my love of Ornithology and electric guitar in equal measure. You enter the Curve through a chain mail curtain and into a dark space with flashing strobes and video projections of guitarist’s fingers running up and down the fret board, and then into a bright room interspaced with sand and grass islands each with an electric guitar or cymbals inverted as perches, nests and feeding stations and linked to amplifiers.
It’s plain bloody daft to be honest, but the accompanying blurb is just wonderful; “A constant state of flux where the sonic variations are endless, the visitors movements elicit counter movements by the birds, resulting in a subtle choreography” – NO the birds are just doing what birds do, building nests in the bridge sections of the guitars (the installation was recently brought to a halt when an egg was laid on a Les Paul); feeding from a cymbal filled with bird seed and chasing each other around through sheer boredom. But if you are lucky a twig is dragged down a fret board and we get half a tuned chord (I’ve heard some signed artists do worse at a sound check mind you).
More blurb, “The guitars are Les Paul models by Gibson, instrument of choice for some of the world’s most celebrated musicians, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards etc and enjoyed for the clean sound that typifies the Les Paul” – Oh dear, someone hasn’t done their research properly – McCartney ain’t really a guitar player, Keith ain’t a Les Paul player and the last thing a Les Paul sounds like is clean- but never mind this is Art.
Funnily enough, during my years at Gibson we had a dozen phone calls a day requesting Gibson giveaways for all kinds of odd things like this so I had to chuckle when I saw they had supplied white Les Paul ‘Studio’ models and SG bass ‘scrappers’ which no self respecting guitarist would be seen dead playing, but do the birds care? This kind of sums it all up, and re-affirms my belief that the French simply can’t do ‘rock n roll’ (all they have given us is the last 50 years is Johnny Halliday and Gong) but the birds get 10 out of 10 especially when they flock and swarm across the room, lovely. However this could be a great excuse to visit the wonderful Barbican Centre and all it has to offer.
Pretentious Modern Artist of the Month.
This month’s award goes to the aptly named Cy Twombly for his Tate Modern works entitled ‘Bacchus’ – 3 identical giant white canvasses covered in abstract red paint swirls (I did exactly the same thing recently before painting the walls of my flat a different colour), Jackson Pollock he ain’t and he must be stopped at all costs.
© Words - Dave Cairns/ ZANI
The Barbican
