THE CULTURAL JACKDAW

Pirate Time

In May last year I started to spot a few Pirate inspired cultural events.

The Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides launched:

There was  National Pirate Day in Marlow:

The Museum of London Docklands hosted a Pirates exhibition to mark the anniversary of the execution of Captain Kidd, the exhibition explored the history of pirates in London. It told tales of the high seas and the corruption of London's East India Company and the show revealed how close the links between the city and piracy really were:

Then flash-forward to this year and I've recently heard about the great work that these guys are doing in East London to help young people develop literacy and creativity. 

This is a play that is now on tour across the country:

And the new animation from Aardman called The Pirates - In an Adventure with Scientists, a film it took five years to put together, launches later next month. 

A while ago I wrote that Zombies may be the new Vampires but now there's no doubt that Pirates are the hottest fantasy characters capturing people's imagination.

I'm looking forward to the rest of this year to see what other cultural ideas they inspire.

 

Sir David Hare

Cultural Brainfood - February 2012 issue

This is a newspaper I've just written (with the help of @sophiesimmons) that looks at some of the cultural themes that may be influential this year.

The Brooklyn Brothers Brainfood Newsletter - February 2012 issue

View more documents from culturaljackdaw

If you like this, check out my other 'Cultural Brainfood' presentations on the link above.

Recording Lives

Two neat examples of companies wanting to record people's live in a Blue Peter kind of way.

The first one is the Yahoo! time capsule project and the second is the National Trust's attempt to create the biggest blog in history.

Cultural Nuances

Listened to the fascinating Word of Mouth programme on Radio 4 last night - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/wordofmouth.shtml - which had an interesting part on what the @ sign is called in different countries.

In the Netherlands or Romania it's a monkey's tail. Poland, Slovenia and Germany it's a monkey. In France, Italy, Korea and Turkey it's called a snail and in modern Hebrew it's a struddle.

These insights were delivered by Nick Rawlinson - editor of Mac User magazine - who thought the @ sign looks like a swiss roll.

The # sign is also called an octothorpe.

Exclamation marks (!!!) are apparantly called bangs by bloggers and publishers call them screamers.

Brilliant.

DIY Fanzines

London has a proud history of fanzines that have been produced on a shoe-string budget.

They're always produced by people with a passion (bordering on obsession) and a desire to be heard.

Whether it’s football, music, fashion or culture, what’s nice is that people make an effort and produce something with small print runs. It’s a welcoming antidote to the mainstream press and these crafted gems of ideas, photography and words are great little things to read on the way home.

The Internet is great but I think it’s nice to see people making things.

The Eel (picture below) is The Broadway Fanzine for the area where I live in Hackney. I picked it up at the local Hackney City Farm and it’s a fanzine dedicated to radical action to avoid the redevelopment of the area by a sole property owner. And it just made me think that there's probably no better way to get your voice heard on issues that you're passionate about than fanzines.

So here are a few other ‘zines to whet your appetite:

http://www.fullmoonemptysportsbag.com/

http://www.transparentmagazine.com/main.htm

http://www.supermagazine.co.uk/

http://www.showmercy.co.uk/

http://www.legun.co.uk/

http://www.socialismmagazine.com/ 

Punk turns 30

Happy Birthday to the seminal movement that was punk. Q magazine recently dedicated an issue to the 70s movement and Selfridge's are hosting a four week long Punk event in their new Ultralounge space on Oxford Street.

   

http://www.selfridges.com/index.cfm?page=1005&articleID=4994

Dead Artist Endorsement

When famous artists die, it's inevitable that someone somehwere will make money from their name.

In the gold-rush to make that money, the people who are in charge of their estate often pick the wrong projects to endorse.

Classic examples are the Citroen Picasso and Salvador Dali Perfume (below). What have either of these two products got in common with those great Spanish artists?

So when I heard of a recent endorsement by The Jean Michel Basquiat estate I was fearing the worst. Basquiat is a favourite artist of mine, so to see his estate endorse something like a car or perfume would really disappoint me.

Basquiat was a graffiti artist by trade when he was 'found' by the New York art scene. Along with Keith Haring he made the crossover to the artworld, although he never lost any of the edge and politicism he displayed as a graffiti artist. He "came to personify the art scene of the 80s, with its merging of youth culture, money, hype, excess, and self-destruction. And then there was the work, which the public image tended to overshadow: paintings and drawings that conjured up marginal urban black culture and black history, as well as the artist's own conflicted sense of identity".

Any endorsement would have to be relevant to what Basquiat was about and where he came from.

So when I found out that Reebok were producing limited edition "Reeboppers" I was pleasantly suprised. These sneaks were released in October 2005 as a limited edition of 60 pairs and available only at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The shoe is limited to 1500 pairs and comes in three colours.

The Basquiat estate has signed a multi-year agreement with Reebok so we can expect to see more collaborations and a Basquiat appearance in the "I Am What I Am" campaign which has already launched. The campaign (which is Reebok's largest advertising spending in 10 years) also features Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Allen Iverson, Kelly Holmes, Yao Ming, Lucy Liu, and Stevie Williams. In the UK it features The Streets and Ryan Giggs amongst others.

I bought the black and white leather pair.