the hijinks of molly & tara

yes, my dears, those are heart-shaped banana oat muffins you see. and they were tasty!

this project by the space hijackers has a wonderful yes-men feel about it, with their tongue-in-cheek impersonation of Transport For London (TFL) and what they should be doing. amazing!

advertisements on public transport have always grated on me – corporate sponsorship fees may be subsidizing my train fare, but it’s not like there are many alternatives for getting around. (how is public transport funded, anyhow? isn’t iit also partially federal money? tabitha would know!)

anyhow, it’s nice  to see groups of people out there engaging with their surroundings. i’ve had many conversations where people say that they like both graffitti and advertisements as long as they’re of a certain ‘quality.’  i like even scribbled tags, proof that some kid had the guts to claim a bit of visual, physical sapce as her own, to leave her mark (of however little artistic merit), whereas advertisements, however clever or beautiful, always leave me with a vague gross feeling of being manipulated.

a lot of banksy’s writings are about how graffitti and other ‘illegal’ use of public space is illegal only because it is not being paid for, as advertising is. if public space is public, why can it be bought? 

subways aren’t a public space, obviously – you have to pay to get in – but the advertising is so intrusive and so built into the atmosphere that it’s nearly impossible not to look at it. i especially hate the long rows of repetitive posters up the sides of the escalators here in london. there’s something about their proximity and the motion as you pass them that makes it nearly impossible not to look at them – trying frustrates me nearly every time.

as suggested by people the space hijackers spoke to, it would be nice to replace the advertisements with art or poems, but even just blank space would be welcome. better yet, what if commuters could trade being passive receptors of massages on public transport for becoming active creators of content, marking walls, drawing pictures, and having drawn-out, scrawled conversations with each other?

other good stuff i found on their website:                                                             urban letterboxing                                                                                                        the starbucks game

the laboratory of insurectionary imagination

I am employed, at least until the second week of January! I am a ‘host’ at a Christmas production of Hansel & Gretel at the Barbican (a well-known arts centre in London City… it’s got a theatre, concert hall, gallery, cinemas and hosts all sorts of events and conventions). 

But I’m not your conventional usher. The production’s pretty fantastic – it’s a promenade performance, so rather than having the audience sit in the stalls while the performers are onstage, they’ve transformed the entire stage and backstage into a series of sets/ environments which the audience follows the performers through. I’m one of the six people who guide the audience through the different settings, making sure they don’t get lost and that they’re not in the actors’ way. It was fun at first… a week in and it’s getting routine. But I am getting paid to be part of a production, so I’m happy!

Over here, there’s a holiday tradition of family fairy-tale themed shows put on at Christmas time called pantomimes, or ‘pantos.’ They are absurd and overblown, with villains and heroes for the kids and double entendres for the adults. There must be at least one man dressed in drag, playing a semi-principle female character, and there is usually some sort of b-list actor or celebrity in each production. It seems that every theatre I know has a Christmas panto on and everyone I know has been to see them when they were children.

I went to see a panto version of Hansel and Gretel with my housemate and her mum last Friday, and it was raucous fun. There’s much shouting at the characters (BEHIND YOU! THE WITCH IS BEHIND YOU!) blatant acknowledgement of the audience (Witch: I need some children to eat. Witch’s helper, the Wolf: *gesturing to the balcony row* How about some of those? (at which the two little girls sitting in front of us quickly ducked down under the balcony rail so that they were hidden from the actors)), and reworking of the story  (additional characters that I’m sure weren’t in the version I know include: a Yellow Bird, a Mole, a Wolf, a landlord that the family rents its cottage from, and his daughter. And the stepmum had a Jamaican accent.  And the Witch had a security alarm installed to keep the children from escaping, which took the form of a heavyset man in full-on heavy metal viking regalia, singing hardcore metal because ‘it sounds like music to adults, but to children it just sounds like noise’. He left Hansel and Gretel writhing on the floor. Gotta love it.)

Everything I love best about the story was in both productions: trails of pebbles and breadcrumbs, a house you can eat, a bone finger, and a courageous girl saving the day. Just goes to show how truly good stories can take not only endless repetition, but the best & the worst adaptation.

update: molly found a theme that does it! yay molly! but now methinks we really need a new header, especially as we like to this we’re eco-friendly travel people…

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i am figuring out how to do an author byline, because it’s getting really annoying not knowing who’s written what unless each post is signed in the post. but i think i’ve figured it out!

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didn’t work. molly, let’s change our theme. i’ve been doing research, and apparently some themes put the author byline at the top on the post and others don’t. this one doesn’t – i’m going to go looking for one that does!

-tara (hopefully soon i won’t have to sign within the post!)