Ghent
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On thursday I had the luck to be sent to belgium for the day to visit the BoldItalic lecture in Ghent, Belgium.
This was my first visit to Ghent, and was the second time I have traveled on the Eurostar. I think it is remarkable that one can step onto a train at London, Waterloo, and 2 hours later step out onto a foreign platform in a foreign country. It takes a bit of time to then realise you are in a foreign country, and for your ears to accept a different language. I’m used to the traditional way of flying and the psychology of entering a new country from the air. The Eurostar is grounded. It brings countries closer together. An icon for globalisation.
The trip was very smooth and easy. From the eurostar at Brussels I took a rather crowded train to Ghent, then hopped on an electric tram to the vooruit where Daniel Eatock was just finishing his talk. I was deeply sorry I missed his performance, but was soothed by the knowledge that the excelently named, James Goggin would be stepping up next.
Mr Goggin gave a very good talk. He began by discussing nationality and the method of stamping CANCELLED on his Australian passport to physically cancel his citizenship. He had a very anthropological approach and I really liked his weather project, taking clips of wether reports from around the world. I did not know that much about his work, so I can appreciate that someone who already knew all about his lost satellite project, direction of the Wire magazine and work for the Tate, would have found the talk boring. I, fortunately, did not.
Lost Satellites by James Goggin
The best talk, by far, was one that reminded me of John Cage’s performance of 4′33″ where the almost all the audience left the building. Will Holder’s ’speech’ - An Attempt to Evolve created a similar effect. This was perhaps because his talk was not a conventional talk. No. He had a conversation on stage with a girl called Cally Spooner. Nothing was scripted and it naturally took some time to get rolling but before long it evolved into a very interesting situation. As we watched Will ask Cally about design and its relevance to speech, we, the remaining audience, were the voyeurs. It was strangely exhilerating to watch these two people on stage having a conversation, as if they were in the pub.
Speech, as Cally explained, was an exchange of talking and listening, between two, or several, people. Alot of her discussion was based on Anne Moeglin-Delcroix’s book Esthétique du livre d´artiste which outlined the difference between fixed ’speech’ as langue and fluid spoken ’speech’, or conversation, as parole. Cally suggested, that Design should follow parole in that it should be a two way process, with a designer talking and listening to their content.
Ghent itself has a charming character that probably came from the fact it wasn’t trying too hard. Its houses some lovely flemish cathedrals yet they have not been comercialised in the way that Notre Dam has. It also has one of the smallest houses in belgium, which I tried to find, but perhaps it was just too small. The one thing that was most prevalent was the lack of cars. Bicycles seemed to be the main transport, and the city was scattered with yellow bikes marked www.studentENmobiliteit.be, provided by the local university.
My kind of city.
