Urban artefacts 2012: Damsgård, Bergen and around

A small selection of images from walking tours in Bergen 2012.

Lost, abandoned, forgotten things.

Surfaces that look like art.

retro radio teeshirt print in the park

obsolete advertising for consumer electronics

Bjarne Blakstad's dead cassette machine

safety belt

amphibious vehicle

De.collage, street art

To see a man about a dog in the window / colour fields

Photos, December 2012

Some images to keep this (sleeping) blog alive. No special narrative here, just a random selection of recent photos.

red stripe triangle at Sydnesplass, University of Bergen

Mystery sculptor in the woods, an assemblage that changes periodically

Shard from the Tate Modern roof

Destination London: empty

The Blackfriars Ghost Bridge reflected

Dead decks

Dead spa

But butt butt

Canine street art

Secret Soviet Cities

http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/secret-soviet-cities.html

Visit the Gestaltbunker with Brother Paul

The Gestaltbunker – Selected Poems 1965-2010 – by Paul A. Green is now available from Shearsman Books.

http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2012/green.html

The Gestaltbunker encapsulates the range of Paul A Green’s output. His briefings on nuclear apocalypse, global melt-down and the excesses of media landscaping are transmitted through surreal inscapes and an intensifying torsion of language. He moves from mid-life probes into the basement of a psyche to domestic praise-songs and celebrations. The riddles of time and consciousness continue to pre-occupy him, whether encountered through magick, music or the mysteries of the city.

“Thrillingly dystopian...” John Goodby

“His interests have coaxed him deep into the occult, surrealism and pop culture; his investigations meld and come into outstanding idiom...”  J. Michael Yates

“From his cloister, Brother Paul emerges, jazzed & weaponized. As raw as a Delta Blues in a sharecropper's shack, yet as sinister as Flash Gordon playing Faustus on the Mongo fault-line abyss.”   Lawrence Russell 

Paul A. Green grew up in London.  He studied at Oxford and the University of British Columbia, on the MA Creative Writing Programme.  He’s worked as a radio presenter, teacher, used-book operative and as Lecturer in Media at the Royal National College for the Blind.  

His poetry has appeared  in magazines ranging from  New Worlds to Poetics Journal, while he’s appeared over the decades in pubs, clubs, colleges and festivals, often in musical or multi-media collaborations.  Recordings have been broadcast on CBC, WFMU-FM  and  Resonance-FM or disseminated on-line by culturecourt.com.

Plays performed include The Dream Laboratory (CBC Radio),  Ritual of the Stifling Air (BBC Radio 3), The Voice Collection (RTE), The Mouthpiece (Resonance-FM),  Terminal Poet (New Theatre Works)  and Babalon (Travesty Theatre), an evocation of occultist/rocket scientist Jack Parsons.  Recent short fiction includes The Poets of Radial City in  Unthology 2, published by Unthank Books.  His first novel The Qliphoth  was published by Libros Libertad in 2007. A sequel awaits publication.

If  you’ve already received this information by other  channels and/or have no desire to enter the Gestaltbunker, apologies for this intrusion.

Artist Gardeners

Artist Gardeners is a project initiated by London artist Dimitri Launder, formerly the primus motor behind the artist-run space Area Ten in Peckham, South London. Artist Gardeners appears to be another development within the growing field of urban agriculture, eco-art and alternative ways of thinking about sculptural interventions in both public and private space. More information at their website.

Cranes in Bergen, winter solstice 2011

Cranes in the mist. A cold, icy, misty winter's morning in Bergen.

More images here.

Everywhere you look in the city at the moment there are cranes.

Francis McKee in the catalogue to Psycho Buildings (Hayward Gallery (2008):

"We live in a world increasingly determined by transience and cities of the 21st. century are in a constant state of flux. Now, cranes have becomes a permanent feature of the landscape as this accelerated process endlessly reshapes every city."

Radial City News

Today the Hereford cell of Bureau of Unstable Urbanism  releases  a version of A Beginner's Guide to Radial City, featuring a random selection of shorter texts and images from the Quantum Brothers' intermittent project. It can be accessed as a Kindle e-book.


Synchronicitously, Unthank Books today publishes  Unthology 2, featuring Brother Paul's story The Poets of Radial City. 


"UNTHOLOGY No. 2 showcases established writers on great form and introduces exciting new voices. Its thirteen stories depend upon choices voluntary or otherwise, incarcerations and manic episodes and moments of doubt and transcendence. A man on his stag night encounters a woman who threatens all his certainties. The most ridiculous Health and Safety rules ever infect a company HQ. The complete lexicon of the poets of Radial City is finally made available. These are resonant tales for anxious times."

Contains writing by: Joshua Allen, Sarah Evans, Shanta Everington, Paul A. Green, Lander Hawes, Ian Madden, Melissa Mann, M. Pinchuk, Stephanie Reid, Ashley Stokes, Nick Sweeney, Tessa West and Charles Wilkinson.  Also available as a Kindle e-book and as an i-Book.