White Man’s Burden

Thank God that Brian Eno is coming to curate VIVID at the opera house in Sydney. For a short but terrifying moment there was a chance that a young local person might have decided on what was going down. But common sense has prevailed and we rely on the tastes of 1970s Mother Country.

To Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth Rex V2.0.
We the Humble Petitioners undersigned, your loyal subjects from the far flung antipodean colonies, humbly beseech your Royal Majesty to provide us with the culture that we so obviously lack, for the illumination of our feeble untutored minds. Please be sending an emissary from the Mother Country to guide us through the musical and visual arts of which we know nothing.
Yours, Convicts.

Dear convicts I will send my faithful Father Brian Eno to lead you in matters cultural. Make sure that the pound notes are crisp.
Yours, Queen.

So, tell us, what is coming to Sydney such that we must forgo meat pies to save our pennies? What has the great man decided to bring in his suitcase?

Ladytron. Oh yes, nothing quite sums up 2009 like an 80’s nostalgia band that peaked about a decade back. We have nothing like this here and will be very glad of the instruction. Arse.

Lee Scratch Perry. Why just the other decade, or was it a few decades ago, I was saying to myself that Lee Scratch Perry sure sums up dub music. It’s like that wildlife petting zoo in the city centre for people that don’t want to drive too far. I bet … yes of course Adrian Sherwood will be there. Will he do the same act with the speed and the mixing desk as he did 30 years ago? Will be the same desk and the same encrusted speed?

Laaraji. Yeah that was a great screwing record when I was a kid.

Jon Hopkins. Oh look somebody under 30. What does he do? Cafe Del Mar soundalike? Oh that takes me back to when I used to work in the desktop publishing office and the management girls would put on Cafe Del Mar CDs over and over. And he’s worked with Coldplay! Be still my beating heart. Look he has a VJ. Tick ALL the boxes.

Liberace in his coffin. I made that one up, but it would be infinitely cooler that all that rot.

Ah, I could go on, but I go on too much. This stinks of an age group and a mindset, and it should have happened 20 years ago or not at all. This whole thing feels like something that was on the shelf until finally somebody accrued enough power to put it on, unchanged from when it was first outlined in the late 80’s.

I don’t blame Brian Eno – it’s enormously ego boosting, he gets to party with all his old friends, and besides the man is so poor he had to sell his DX7.
Before anyone squeals about jealousy – I have other events in motion and they are not so goddamn sycophantic and mouldy.

Of course the highlight for me will be the installation of 77 Million Bad Paintings which will be running throughout the programme. I am sincerely curious to see if multiple examples of this work somehow lift it above the extremely underwhelming DVD version on which I spent my pie money.

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