By Ciaran Kurran
Raymond Williams defined culture as the whole way of life of a people, not only imaginative works, or Hegelian-inspired historical progress, but the practices and behaviour patterns embodied in all strata of society; essentially arguing that, far from being a reified commodity, “culture is ordinary”. Decades later, Black Francis sang something or other about ‘Subbacultcha’, but no-one really listened, largely due to the song being off the sci-fi inspired Pixies record. I, by contrast, define Culture as things which human beings profess to be interested in to appear sophisticated. As a certified cultural critic – I read Adorno before you did – here are my 6 (6! how irreverent!) best Cultural Things of 2013. I’m well aware that the year’s not over yet, but people are already throwing up glittery Christmas tat around town, and the extra notice gives you a bit more time to name-drop.
1. The Impossibility Of Originality In The Future Past – Installation art – conceptualised by Damien Hirst.
Subtitled “a collection of freelance curators reading books in a semi-detached house” and featuring time travelling slaves from the early 1990s, I will simply refer to the press release for here on in: “the slaves are utilised by Hirst as a means of calling attention to the tensions between neo-colonialism, Generation X, functional illiteracy and neo-Kantian conceptions of aesthetic morality. Penguins are considered to be very inoffensive, and art-works challenge this lazy cliché; all wall brackets, door handles and lamps produced by specially chosen ateliers/unpaid interns.” Somehow I found it both transcendent AND transplendent – check it out, particularly if you’re lucky enough to live near the dilapidated, Brutalist block in south-east London which houses it!
2. Are We Doomed To Repeat The Status Updates Of The Past? – T.V series – written and presented by Alain De Botton
Bucking the trend that suggests that television friendly pop philosophers are no longer relevant in the fast-moving, Web 3.0 era, Alain De Botton’s fascinating 3 part documentary on BBC 4 analysed the contemporary tendency towards repeating Facebook status updates as a means by which humanity attempts to reassert control and constancy in the context of increasingly fragmented existential experience. Part one (‘The Stoics and the Status Update’) – looked at how the thought of Marcus Aurelius prefigured the concept of self-definition via status updating. Part two left antiquity and treated of Nietzsche as a Ravenous Tweeter, whilst part three looked at the influence of Karl Marx on Russell Brand’s contemporary Facebook oeuvre.
3. Conor Oberst’s Selected Amazon Purchases – anthology – edited (with introduction) by A.J Weberman
Noted Dylanologist/Garbagologist A.J Weberman has found a new seam to mine in his analysis of noted songwriters after finding – through a fortuitous connection with Lulzsec – access to Conor Oberst (a.k.a Bright Eyes)’s Amazon purchasing history. Readers of this new compendium can speculate for hours over why Oberst bought a Super Mario Brothers baseball cap and a toilet brush on the same day that I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning was released, as well as piecing apart the significance of bulk purchases of Sensodyne toothpaste (is it a temporary problem or a chronic illness? whither Pronamel?!). Weberman’s fascinating introduction partly delineates his own personal journey from rifling through Dylan’s trash to sorting through Oberst’s digital detritus.
4. How We Are Omnivorous – The Collected Emails Of Dave Eggers – anthology – unedited by Dave Eggers
With the 2013 release of How We Are Omnivorous, finally sensitive Y Generation souls can get meaningful insights into the mind of one of contemporary culture’s most prolific authors. Never a letter writer, Eggers’ collected emails include some truly illuminating gems. Highlights include non-sequitur picture only messages to his (asshole) younger brother; mellifluous, sardonic complaint emails to Netflix over the quality of Breaking Bad streaming; excess usage of confessional, interior monologues in communication with third world NGOs; and countless knowingly ‘ironic’ forwards of “Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman” jokes.
5. Space Is The Non-Place – A Long Winter In Port Watson – travel non-fiction – written by Bill Bryson
“Port Watson is that place where one is in the moment where one actually is when you believe that Port Watson could exist: a mobile territory of possibility rather than a fixed location. Port Watson is the location of realizing possible utopias that begins from the space of possibility opened in the imagination. At its best outer space operates in the same way, opening a space of possibility within the present through which other realities become possible.”
6. The Australian Barbra Streisand Show – music/performance – written, performed and faultlessly executed by the Australian Barbara Streisand (with honourable mentions going to the support act The Australian Nana Mouskouri)
The perfect simulacrum – currently (and perpetually) touring the world, underlining the fact that, even in an increasingly fragmented globalised zeitgeist, the Australian Barbra Streisand show can truly unite divergent races, creeds, classes, ideologies, accountants and hipsters.
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