The Library and the Damage Done

Malicious Damage
The Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton
Ilsa Colsell
Donlon Books, London, 2013 

From the blurb:
"In 1962 John (Joe) Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were charged with, "larceny, malicious damage and willful damage," involving hundreds of books in the Islington Library's collection. Over the previous three years the pair had been stealing these books, removing thousands of illustrations and either using them to create alternative dust jackets for other books (which were then returned quietly to the library's shelves), or pasting them directly into a large collage spanning the interior walls of their flat. The reconfigured dust jackets were part of a decade of often shared creative endeavor. Malicious Damage looks closely at the collaged dust jackets still remaining within the archive at Islington Local History Centre and focuses on the early collaborative nature of Orton and Halliwell's relationship."

Interior wall collage in the Noel Road flat

Joe in cap

Kenneth in wig

Art Rock

Records by Artists, 1958-1990
Giorgio Maffei
Viaindustriae, Foligno, 2013

Catalogue from an exhibition held at the University of Bologna last year. I like the idea of artists making music. I have no idea of what most of these records sound like, though some of the Tristram Carey has been released by Trunk Records, and recordings of Henri Chopin's excellent poetry and electronics are around. 

I like to project possibilities onto the remainder: Joseph Beuys' motorik krautrock outfit; Jean Dubuffet and Asger Jorn's free jazz combo; Brion Gysin's trance project; Yves Klein's Kind of Blue... The Blue Album... Eine Kleine Klein Musik...

The horror... the horror

Horror in Architecture
Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing
Oro Editions, 2013 

An examination of horror and its architectural analogues, including historical perspectives and a dissection of the unease at the heart of the modern project.

Written by a pair of Harvard design graduates turned landscape architects, the text sometimes has the feel of a thesis or academic tract, though it is mostly accessible and the profuse illustrations make an interesting photo-essay in themselves. The juxtaposition of rotten architecture with biological freaks, mullet hairstyles and stills from John Carpenter's The Thing, Army of Darkness and other horror films is most enjoyable, so much so that this little paperback has been enlivening my bathroom reading for the past couple of months. I shall miss it but, you know, binge and purge.

 

Outrage

Ian Nairn - Words in Place
Gillian Darley and David McKie
Five Leaves, Nottingham, 2013


Architecture critic and polemicist Ian Nairn seems to have finally been deemed worthy of reappraisal by the academy that he never wanted to be part of. The past year has seen a few press features, a nice BBC documentary and even the reprint of some of his books.


Words is Place is an introduction to Nairn's life and career, not quite as fulfilling as its subject's own writing but certainly of interest to anyone new to Nairn. His prose is usually engaging and informative; those that write about him are more varied in their abilities.

Young and angry

Old and bitter

If you cannot get hold of any of his books, the films he made for television just as good, better in some respects as the viewer really gets to see and hear the apoplectic rage and outpourings of love he had for buildings and places. 'Passion' is a much abused word. Nairn had real passion, which combined with his own private demons and eventually tore him apart.