Read Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project Online
Authors: Iain Sinclair
Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project (18 page)
Steve is in town for the preliminary assessments, a courtesy tour of the Westfield building site, some triangle sandwiches curling under strip lights. As we advanced on 2012, so the nightsweat desperation, to find proper GP sculptural ballast, ratcheted up: the vision men tossed out a £15-million teaser. I met a veteran of many successful public art commissions at a memorial event for J. G. Ballard at Tate Modern. Her first life-changing inspiration, she told me, was being taken as a child to see Ballard’s exhibition of crashed cars. Shift of context, that’s all it takes: the outside brought inside and re-labelled. She’d already received the paperwork, now circulating among blue-chip names, for something,
anything
, big enough and dumb enough to be called iconic, as the Olympic Park paperweight. ‘The budget’s getting close to Kapoor and Gormley,’ she said. ‘They need the names, even if there’s no money left in the pot to go beyond a maquette. That giant horse for Ebbsfleet will never be built.’
Dilworth wanted background information on Stratford, its history, topography, myths. The only useful advice I could offer was: keep my name out of it. The Olympic borough of Newham had followed Hackney in declining to allow a book event, featuring a stellar line-up of dissenting East London authors and academics, into one of their flagship buildings. The show transferred to the Bishopsgate Institute in the City. Where the group photo, creased suits and severe spectacles lined up along a high table, made us look like the Politburo.
In many ways, the essential literature of the GP era is the proposal, the bullet-point pitch, the perversion of natural language into weasel forms of not-saying. Dilworth, whose art as I understood it, was raw, impulsive and essential, was obliged to collaborate with a graphic designer on a PR document intended to flatter the inadequacies of the commissioning brief.
SAIL: Iconic Sculpture Proposal. Landmark Sculpture for WESTFIELD, Stratfordcity.
Reading this strategic bilge, I winced at section headings undoing, boast by boast, everything Dilworth had previously achieved. ‘Iconic and Identifiable’. ‘A Signifier’. ‘Connecting with the Image of Stratford’. ‘Timeless and Multicultural’. ‘Water Feature Engagement’. ‘Environmental Concerns’. ‘Safety Issues’.
Safety issues? After years of meat-stitching, harpooning, crow-crushing, rock-wrestling? The transformation was absolute. A horn, in the form of a sail, was computer-inflated to mall-dominating prominence. It accepted a social identity as a ‘way marker’ and ‘meeting point’ for blue-fence ghosts. And offered a nod in the direction of ‘a long history of trading, with the River Lea connecting to the Thames estuary and beyond’. The ‘conceptual core’ would reach back to ‘Viking occupation and earlier’. The weight was calculated at fifteen tonnes, but was deemed to be light enough for ‘removal prior to the Olympic Games’.
I can’t blame Steve for being seduced by the possibility of realizing funds for more sympathetic projects, or for wanting to present his work on an epic scale. Mallworld is where the money is, if you are not the kind of marquee name to underwrite the regeneration of a landfill site down the A13, a mining operation outside Doncaster, or a maritime City of Culture. And if, bollock naked, you are not allowed to bestride the Alps like Hannibal.
Dilworth was one of those who made the China trip. With the architects, politicians, car salesmen and poets. Renchi, when he travelled, favoured the high country: Nepal, the American Northwest, Peru. Trail-walking, camping, sketching, taking part in spiritual exercises and native ceremonies. Steve, inspecting stone-carving operations for one of his commissioned public sculptures, was a mid-air Sinologist, shuttling between past and future Olympic venues.
We listened to the stories of his adventures, the meals eaten, the craftsmen encountered in a south-eastern Chinese city given over to the production of white stone lions for restaurants in Hull and Peterborough. A few weeks later, when he had gone back to Harris, Dilworth was generous enough to present me with the handwritten journal of his trip to a tourist city in the Fujian Province.
Friday 30th March 2007. Well, here I am, my first full day in China. Still jet lagged, couldn’t sleep for the electric buzzing, cotton wool stuffed in my ears.
About to be picked up to be taken to the stone yard, to inspect the work. First impressions – big city, funny start. Cathy met me at the airport, flagged down a taxi and jumped the queue. Police stopped taxi, told off driver for taking us. Taxi nearly crashed, oil in the road. Pleased my credit card is recognized by hotel, worried when phone on plane, and in airport, didn’t work.
Driver came unstuck on the bridge coming back into Xiamen, cut up a car. No real damage, but the other party wanted to call the police, lots of shouting. Police took photos. The driver had a habit of noisily clearing his throat every 20 minutes and spitting out of the window. He came with me to have noodles. Every time he had a sip of beer he insisted on clinking glasses. Taught him to say ‘sláinte’.
The stone yard looked impressive and the work force gathered round. Took their pictures and drank cups of tea, then off to restaurant, private room and seafood lunch. Dried fish, a kind of small whelk, two types of fish, squid, soy bean stalks, chilli sauce, rice. Prawns. Too much to finish.
On the drive out the pollution combined with fog was dispiriting, all that crap in the air. On the way back the sun was yellow-orange in the sky, doing its best to get through.
Saturday evening, 31st March. Everything seems either to be under construction or from the late Sixties – People’s Revolution? Bought a couple of dried sea slugs, some dried pipe fish, dried cockles (I think). Photos of odd fish, crabs, frogs, in front of a restaurant. Tempted to step inside and ask for a live frog to go.
A museum of freak animals, two-headed sheep, a live dove with 2 extra deformed legs and a tortoise that needed space. Animal husbandry is not a big priority in China. Felt really sorry for the squirrel turning aimlessly in a cage. Cage was locked. I couldn’t release it, without ending up in gaol.
Back on the mainland island of Xiamen (the ferry shuttles back and forth), then off for a foot massage. It was like getting beaten up (by a young woman, about 20 maybe). God, I felt the pressure points, but after an hour completely relaxed: when she left the room, I didn’t notice. Cost 28 CNY (about £2), ridiculously cheap. I felt relaxed at last. All paid for by Cathy.
Monday 2nd April. Yesterday I went to the Buddhist temple. Beggars gather here. A young boy with seriously deformed skull. A girl playing on a stringed instrument looked blind, skin tight, ear almost gone. Others with lumps for feet. No social security. Sink or swim. Rather sink if it were me. Living in the hotel in the lap of luxury and seeing abject poverty is odd, can’t do anything about it, give a few yen.
Afternoon: watching TV in hotel. Thunderstorm outside, quite cold. Off to restaurant at six for wedding celebration. First, get some flowers for the bride.
Meal made up for everything. Rice spirit is strong. Wine a bit rough. Food kept coming, this was the final bash after weeks of celebrating. Each day different.
Started with sweet soup, then every kind of sea food. Jellied sea worm, jelly fish. Clams in shells, big crayfish, fish steamed. Black chicken soup. Just kept going. Chestnuts and broccoli. Ending with sweet soup. Lots of toasts and clinking of glasses. They wanted to see if I drank. Years of living on Harris came into its own.
Wandered into a bookshop and bought a drawing pad and a book of Chinese blessings. A tea shop. A Chinese guy sat down and introduced himself – Michael – retired from running a restaurant in San Francisco. Spends half his time in Xiamen, the winter in America. Drank so much tea. Oddly enough, tea is very expensive, even by western standards. Shops specialize in one type of tea only. As it gets older, so it gets more expensive.
Wednesday 4th April. To the stone yard, to see the progress. Knocked out by the work, just polishing stage to complete.
Struck by the amount of sculpture, every 50 yards, both sides of 6-lane road into town. Something for everyone, classic Chinese humour to contemporary art.
An old lady was attempting to cross the 6-lane road with a cow in front of her. My driver used his horn, instead of slowing down. People pull straight into the road in front of on-coming traffic. Zebra crossings are killing zones.
Beggars in the market. I’m an easy and obvious target. Guy with no arms, thalidomide type, got a dollar. So did another poor soul. Don’t know what to do, maybe check out the university gallery.
Friday 5th April. Checked my emails. Joan tells me that there is just £800 left on the credit card. Did the hotel help themselves when they swiped it? Or has there been some other sort of fraud? Asked Joan to give me a call, while I try to figure out what the score is. My worst nightmare. Trying not to panic. Thinking about worst case scenarios.
Back from a long walk into the old market. Caught again by beggars, three of them. I gave one a dollar to help my karma! Stopped at least twice by gaggles of girls wanting to have photographs taken with me. Bought a CD of Chinese music and a sable brush. Still stressing. I’m not sure I will sleep at all, but I’m too tired to care.
There are various possibilities
a. Get the collector to pay direct.
b. Get my dealer to pay in lieu of money from show.
c. Kill myself.
d. Get my brother to pay.
It’s 2am in Britain and I will miss my flight if I’m held up in any way.
Came back to find them in the middle of cleaning the room, so went out for another walk. Thought I’d have a foot massage. Should have guessed there was something not quite right. Shown into a room with maybe sixty or seventy reclining chairs. Started to take off my boots and socks. Guy came in and said, ‘No foot massage’. Another guy offered girl for sex, so I left.
Phone call from Joan at 5am. £800 has disappeared from the credit card account but there is still enough left to pay bill. Big relief. Will find out what the score is on my return. Obviously some fraud going on.
Last night playing pool with Cathy’s boyfriend. Big upstairs hall, maybe eighty tables. Pint glasses of cold tea. Back at hotel about 11.30. Had a beer and listened to the cabaret, two Chinese girls singing something that sounded like it came from the Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves film.
Tried to find the new city art museum – vast, but still being built. Great sculptures of sails. I find the ‘can do’ quality very impressive and inspiring, when I think of the commissioning process back in the UK. You might as well not bother. Serious money is needed to do anything on a reasonable scale. All that ‘community’ rubbish and hand-wringing arty social workers.
Had an attack of balance disturbance, floor like a boat. A bit worried, but I won’t dwell on it. Took one of the pills the doctor gave me the last time it happened.
Back to the tea shop to meet up with Michael – who didn’t show. Had an entertaining time drinking green tea and learning Chinese. Going to karaoke tonight.
The sculpture yard town is by the sea, although I didn’t realize this until my last visit. Six-lane road, loads of statues, some Christian things. A bit like Basingstoke or maybe Slough. Evidence of new building everywhere.
Sore throat. Down at the stone yard, dusty as hell. Work is fine. Talk about transport. They seem to know what they’re doing. Everything should be fine. Home tomorrow.
I don’t suppose I’m that different from most Brits who have never been to China but have fixed opinions about human rights, dog eating, military dictatorships.
I remember talking to some guys in a stone yard in Aberdeen. Most of their work being done ‘out in China, for a bowl of rice a day’. I’ll have to tell them now, it ain’t like that.
There is something genuine in this experience, the mid-air cultural tourism. But I don’t, from Steve’s journal, know quite what it is. The food, the massage, the beggars, the fraud: they are all available on Bethnal Green Road. And the dust. Yellow sun behind the fug of development. Dilworth’s relish for the fish and the tea and the museums. His exposure to beggars, cripples, caged animals. His apparent lack of interest in the totality of the landscape, how this city connects with the river, the port, the rest of China. It becomes overwhelming, those days waiting for your soul to catch up. The flash-memories of wife, daughters, home.
I remember a television documentary taking Jim Ballard back to Shanghai, the family house like a Surrey stockbroker’s villa where another life might have unfolded. How it required extraordinary feats of self-interrogation to contrive a valid response to the accidents of biography.
A man, at Ballard’s Tate Modern memorial tribute, introduced himself as the second-biggest collector in the world. He had one of about fifteen copies in existence of the pulped Doubleday edition of
The Atrocity Exhibition.
Very recently he had acquired a prize item: a single authenticated brick from the now-demolished school, adapted by war into the Lunghua camp, the cave of memory in which Ballard was interned for those formative years that made him a writer.