Universities – Seats of Learning or Predatory Corporates?

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http://chiropracticstudent.wordpress.com/

As many alumni will no doubt be aware, it is common practice for a university to contact it’s former students asking for charitable donations. I received such a call no less than two months after I graduated last year. My (internal) response? – ‘You’ve already had more than £9675 out of me and I’m still unemployed. You can $£&* right off.’

There is something inherently wrong in the system of British universities. I felt it each of the three years when I applied for my loan of £3225 to pay my tuition fees. I felt it when I was charged £20 in my second year for a replacement campus I.D. card. I felt it on the mornings when I couldn’t find a parking space on campus as parking is reserved for higher-membership-paying members of the public attending the university gym, and the times when I did secure a space and had to pay £1.50 for the privilege. I felt it every time I topped up my printing credit to print out required reading for my seminars, and I really felt it when I forked out over £50 on attending my graduation ceremony at the end of it all.

Higher education is big business.

Universities were once forums where the highest minds in the country could gather to share and create ideas. Universities as we know them today are increasingly corporate enterprises, churning out students and statistics and capitalising on the need in the current job market for a university education.

Undergraduate study is no longer considered a privilege, New Labour’s target-driven policies which sought to get 50% of school leavers into university have had devastating effects upon higher education, with seemingly anybody now able to get a place at a ‘university’ of some sort, with an emphasis on vocational courses over academic subjects, reflected in the drastic cutting of funding to the Humanities at King’s College, which has become a prime example of the declining standards of British institutions, by £2.4 million. There is no longer an elite system, meaning the fees we are paying do not provide us with any particular advantage over anybody else. Master’s degrees have replaced undergraduate degrees as marks of excellence and, of course, Master’s courses too come at a great – non-government-funded – expense. Drive to recruit more overseas students, who pay much higher fees, thus leading to many students lacking basic language skills, while the institution rakes in more money at it’s students’ expense.

The introduction of the Research Excellent Framework and it’s stringent production policies has resulted in an era of austerity in academia. With quantity being favoured over quality, lecturers are under increasing pressure to contribute to the economy, and the university brand, through their research.; a system which not only undermines the notion of academic freedom, but impacts upon student/tutor teaching time, leading to fewer hours of teaching and late and rushed marking
of assignments. compiled in order to promote the brand of the institution.

Such capitalisation is reflected in the pay packets of university management. As Iain Pears highlights in his controversial paper The Palaeographer and the Manager:

With the average vice-chancellor now earning an annual salary of nearly three times as much as a professor, much more than the prime minister and more than the average private sector chief executive. The Principal of King’s, for instance, took home a pay package of £312,000 in 2008/9, up from £292,000 the previous year and £250,000 in 2006/7.1

It rather brings into question the ‘charitable status’ of universities and raises concerns as to how student fees are actually being spent.

Pears goes on to say that it is hardly surprising that King’s should be cutting down its tutoring staff whilst simultaneously hiring administrators, ‘universities’ he states ‘are no longer institutions of learning. They are part of a nationalised industry, and increasingly behave like one.’

It is the students themselves who bear the brunt of such nationalised behaviour, buying into university life and paying a premium for lower quality education – effectively becoming customers of the industry of higher education, the manipulated consumers at the bottom of a bureaucratic, hierarchical, corporate machine. Higher education is now primarily financially driven, with students taking vocational degree courses with a view to securing a high paying career upon graduation and universities offering such courses in abundance because our money-hungry and academically-lacking youth are willing to pay for them.

As a result, students have been pushed to the bottom of the pile, becoming mere consumers in the great corporate set-up of modern establishments; students are no longer scholars working in harmony with their institutions but consumers in the business of higher education, to the extent that some students have campaigned to have the recent fee increase held as a breech of human rights. Capitalising on students

And the extent of the exploitation doesn’t end with extortionate fees: charges for lost student cards, evening ticket prices into the Student Union on par with the entry fees of London night clubs, library fines and printing charges, car parking, the inclusion of tutors’ own publications on many required reading lists – the unashamed exploitation is apparently ceaseless.

And such rising costs are far from reflected in the education facilities found in most UK universities.

As it stands in our capitalist society, it seems there will be no impending end to the exploitation.

George Condo – A vilifying vision of our sordid society

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‘Occasionally real life is crazier than anything that can come from our imagination. You only have to look around you to see how nuts it can actually be.’ George Condo

Surprisingly prolific and boasting friendships with the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring and roots in Warhol’s factory, George Condo expanded the field of Pop Art in marrying the detritus of American pop culture with the traditional painting of European Masters. He terms this technique ‘Artificial Realism’, creating an unmistakable, signature Condonian style that alludes to many great artists and artistic genres, including, most overtly, Picasso and Cubism.

Despite such panoramic attainments most will likely recognise Condo for his infamous collaboration with Kanye West on the provocative cover of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Introduced in more mainstream consciousness with his recent exhibition, Mental States comprises a myriad of imagined portraits, the exhibition incorporates a sense of the comic that contrasts not only with the generally more serious retrospectives shown of late, but with the current solemn mood of western society, further enhancing the fantastical element of Condo’s style and his commentary on modern society and excess. Such humour, though, exists amid a much seedier undertone, the characters in his paintings are smoking, drinking, over-indulging products of 21st century degradation, images which create an overarching sense of unease with regard to the condition of human mania, clearly a point of contention for the artist; ‘These things disturb me’ he says, ‘and I have to paint them out of my system.’

In their obvious displays of levity Condo’s works might be liable to defy any serious regard in the general populace. Yet the distinctly imagined aspect of his works connotes a child-like freedom, which is perhaps the most enduring and appealing aspect to Condo’s paintings and answers the artist’s own question; ‘Can art bring fantasy to life?’. Condo’s art, it seems, achieves just this.

George Condo: Mental States continues in Frankfurt, Germany until May.

Ernest Hemingway clairvoyantly reviews Pilot Fish

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In his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway seems to clairvoyantly provide a description of Pilot Fish’s critical voice, a blog which wouldn’t come into existence until 52 years after his death. He’s pretty much spot on, too; it is exactly the kind of thing we say:

‘The pilot fish talks like this: “Well I don’t know. No of course not really. But I like them…” 

 

 

I’d like to think that if he, one of the greatest American writers in history, was alive today then not only would he fully appreciate and support Pilot Fish’s directive, but he’d subscribe, too.

 

The Artist – A silent film that speaks volumes about pop culture

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Are we becoming over-awed by high-budget, tech-driven 3D Hollywood Blockbusters that offer instant entertainment gratification but little enduring substance? The success of the black and white, silent film The Artist suggests that in reaction to ubiquitous sensationalism in film, we may finally be searching for less.

We often watch films to escape, finding them an excuse to zone out and switch our minds off and sink into 90 minutes of easily-digested action and stock scripting, but perhaps I’m not the only one who finds that approach a little unfulfilling. I’m happy to say the Artist offers a more wholesome cinematic experience. It gives a chance to be creative and active in appreciating film, to use our minds to create conversation and to interpret body language in a way that is blocked by being spoon-fed story-lines and familiar cliché.

Our accelerated generation has been spoilt with media and consumer excess; with social media, Smart-phones, and entertainment on demand. Along with this we have been introduced an era of gauche self-promotion; people are getting louder and the individual clamours to be noticed. What can be learnt from The Artist is the attraction of modesty. The film does not shout, it does not brag, it does not bombard its audience with brand-name endorsements and a pop-chart-topping soundtrack – it has instead been noticed and valued for its quietness. In introducing an artistic and modest subtlety to popular consciousness, The Artist has reminded us of a time when a flash of lower leg was enough to set a pulse racing and in which entertainment didn’t have to be so tackily radicalised. It may interest you to know that some cinema-goers demanded refunds upon learning that this film for which they had paid was silent. I shudder for the philistines.

Despite a few well-publicised adjustment problems, what The Artist proves is that we can cope with having to use our minds a little bit, and perhaps, unbelievable as it may sound, even enjoy doing so. In our ‘have-it-now’ age everybody wants to be heard, but few have much to say. The Artist cuts through the noise.

 

Beat Culture – Tokyo Dreamer

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‘Whatever this young bedroom producer is doing, he is doing it right.’
The Indie Machine 

Sunik Kim, prolific bedroom DJ and industry fledgling is the seventeen year-old who crafted Tokyo Dreamer. A steep learning curve it must have been for him too, given that he’s only been making music for less than a year, and already produced an album which is clean, pure and as bright as the lights of his city.

Kim modestly describes Beat Culture as ‘dense, atmospheric, messy glitch/dub songs’, but there is also a precision and exactitude to his work which he bashfully shrugs off. Instead he’s honourably willing for his music to do the talking for him, which seems to be working well enough given the attention bloggers have been paying since last year. Its refreshing to see a new artist whose work survives and thrives entirely on its own merit, having had no backing from producers or record labels and still stockpiling recommendations from up to the minute blogs like The Needle Drop, Hype Machine and The Up-Turn to name but a few.

His whole album Tokyo Dreamer is available for free download, so go on, get it. Sink into forty minutes of blissfully rich sound.

Ania Hazel Leszczynska’s ‘strange little skill’

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Pilot Fish’s noble appetite for New Art has been sated this week after being introduced to the work of Ania Hazel Leszczynska, the humble animator based in Edinburgh.

A few days ago I was asked to review the first programme for the Exposures Festival, a celebration of unknown weavers of the moving image which begins February 19th at Manchester’s Cornerhouse. The first installment of the festival features seven very diverse short films from students and graduates across the UK, but one in particular stood out for it’s vision, originality and craft-work.

The programme ends with a truly outstanding animation Etude from director Leszczynska who hails from the Edinburgh College of Art. Created with an incredible love and attention to detail the animator creates an enthralling dream world filled with moths, foliage and classical music. The charming story features a smoking cat watching a porcine predator watching a delicate musician at work. As the uncanny and, at points, sinister events play through the animation remains utterly watertight, every frame a compelling static shot of the artwork at large.  Leszczynska succeeds in animating a bright, natural, ethereal-yet-solid world which the viewer instantly sinks in to and becomes a part of. One which despite its many oddities and dangers feels homely and familiar.

She explains here practice simply: ‘I have this strange little skill: I make things move.’ Now working from a studio in Edinburgh the animator continues her work, and I for one will be waiting with breath abated for her next creation. Until then I’d like to propose a toast – with a large glass of red wine – to this outstanding animator whose skill is definitely strange, but by no means small.

Contour States – Samantha Donnelly

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On February 2012 Mancheser’s Cornerhouse opened a new exhibition with a guided tour from the artist Samantha Donnelly.

The first thing the artist made clear during her tour was that the exhibition – Contour States – openly insists on its viewers personal interaction with it, allowing the individual complete power over its subject. The installations inhabit a world where meaning and value is deliberately not prescribed but lies instead in the subjectivity of the onlooker. This might seem like a typical defence of the more obscure contemporary art; to respond to questions such as ‘what does it mean’ with liberal responses like ‘whatever you want it to’, but Donnelly instead talked through the intricate compilations of found and crafted materials with an exactitude that really brought the pieces to life.

The works seem to be occupied by deliberately trite polar opposites, an obsession of the western world. Light and dark, hot and cold, dead and alive, cheap and expensive seem to jostle for position throughout the exhibition, but on a level above this there seems to be one key duality which precedes the others: concepts of the real and false. Personally this reminded me of the deceitfulness of the media image, and how far reality can be removed what is represented. Everything displayed seemed to contradict its own integrity at closer inspection, constantly reminding me that substance, validity and tangibility are not concepts valued highly in contemporary society.

References to great works of literature and art continue to undermine the frailty and falseness of the plastic mass-produced tat peppered throughout the exhibits. A conceptual Venus de Milo is a sterling example of this, Donnelly re-reads the masterpiece’s ideals of the feminine form and translates them into a void hacked wildly into grey polystyrene, which stands swaying precariously among the shapes and images of the exhibition.

After the tour finished I was sure that Contour States met its directive of subjectivity. Talking with others from the tour I heard all manner of interpretation. One man saw ‘a drag builder’ in one piece, and lady described another as ‘rubber gloves of sadness’. More importantly though, beyond the liberating (if unfulfilling) sensation of saying what you think and knowing it can’t be wrong, it is refreshingly clear that the artist has pored over her work with painstaking exactitude. Through the tour it became clear, through her sheer enthusiasm and passion for her work, that everything is present for a reason and everything is exactly in its place. Whatever your outlook on contemporary art and its infinite meanings, it is plain to see that this is a thoughtful, calculated and masterfully crafted exhibition.

Rangleklods

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http://rangleklods.com

‘Already during the first couple of tracks Rangleklods proved the nuanced and impressive spectre of his voice. His soft and deep tone weaved itself easily into the resonating bass, the sparkling melodies and the heavy, heavy beats.’
SOUNDVENUE 

Here’s a bit of background while you listen to ‘Young and Dumb’. The Danish solo artist Esben Andersen, the man behind Rangleklods, has been championed by a reem of blogs and music magazines from the continent, and more recently by Brighton’s The Recommender. As surprising as it is inventive the work of the gentleman Dane seems to be generating a right old buzz with people in the know. The term ‘originality’ seems to be loose on everybody’s lips when they talk about Andersen’s work, and quite understandably; about four or five seconds into the intro it becomes clear that you’ve stumbled upon something a bit special here – to quote the gentleman Halskov at 15 seconds in: ‘Fantastisk intro!’. You’re quite right Halskov, you’re quite right. But that’s just the beginning.

His full debut album, Beekeeper, is due out March 12th but they’re sadly still looking for distribution outside of Denmark. Let’s make that happen, please, distributors of the wider world. Don’t be music hogs. His EP - Home is out now though, that should keep you going.