Gina is busy editing video material and Kaffe is preparing sound for this weekend, when we will be showing some videos at the Spiral 10 Festival. It’s an all female line-up… the other residency artists presenting work are Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa and Serena Korda, both of whom have been working with dance. Emma has been collaborating with a choreographer and will be teaching people how to dance like rock gods (this is certainly a workshop for The Gluts) and Serena has worked with dancers, choreographing the assemblage of a sculpture. Looks very exciting.
Alongside sowing (ha! typo) our videos, we will be shooting ‘Passionfruit Pie’ in the CAC garden on Saturday 28th at 3pm and performing live on Sunday 29th at 3.30pm. If you are thinking of coming over – check out travel for the weekend as there are lots of closures for maintenance on the tube and overland lines to Finchley Road.
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We were back in the studio at Camden today, videoing our anthem GMNO while wearing 3 metallic green gimp suits. Gina and I nearly suffocated in ours and had to cut holes for our eyes and mouth – a very claustrophobic experience. We played a kind of video ‘musical-statues’, where we danced and then stopped the music for one of us to run on, unzip the others costume and squeeze a piece of fruit or veg down it. After this the dancing would start again (all in the name of video continuity of course). It worked well and we really got that genetical mutation going using our delicious palette of broad beans, cucumber, apples, potatoes and melons!
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We are at the top of Primrose Hill to shoot Spaghetti Carbonorama. It’s one of our most popular hits and will always get the crowd jigging along. Right now it gets the Italian tourists jigging along as we have the music playing and our doing our most spectaular and synchronised dance routine with the London skyline behind. Gina has restyled her costume with knee pad breasts and an aeroplane neck rest hat adding a vibratory bonus to the opening sequence. Check January entry for the original version.
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At last we are in the garden. This time back at Camden Arts Centre to shoot Locally Grown Worm and Potato Salad. This is one of our favorite numbers possibly to do with the splendid costume additions, romantic musical style opening-breaking-down-to something quite unexpected, and inspired ending. It’s quite silly and very funny, celebrating the joy of growing your own vegetables within a lyrical prose. Yes we love this number so have an even better time when we discover the three pronged tree to slip in and out of in the garden rather than the usual on stage peek-a-boo routine from behind chairs. Quel jour. In fact we will be performing this live for the Spiral Weekend, next Sunday afternoon August 29th.
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Day three of our video shoot found us in The City – under the gherkin and outside The Royal Exchange. Dressed in over-sized suits we sported comedy moose-tashes and sung our song Roast of Greenwash into mobile phones. The City was quite empty and we imagined everyone on holiday (at their second homes in Tuscany perhaps?) The bankers who weren’t on their holidays were spending their time chillaxing on the steps of The Royal Exchange – texting a deal or two on their mobile phones or arranging a date perhaps? All in all, it seemed that there were more tourists than bankers around. We tried to assimilate ourselves, and hung around making a deal or two before going for a large lunch with lots of wine, port and stilton.
I overheard a banker speaking on their phone:
“Who is the owner of this planet?
I need to buy some more, dammit.
I haven’t got enough,
give me more of your stuff.
Put a green stamp on it,
I just don’t give a shit.”
Uncanny, it was just like listening to our own lyrics!
We are working with a lovely cameraperson Luke Perkin – he has been absolutely brilliant today. Thank-you Luke.
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Just finished a long day working on a video for our song Arctic Roll. We created a very convincing 1970s sitting room in the studio at Camden Arts Centre and then sang into our spoons while eating this special ice-cream.
I haven’t eaten arctic roll since I was a child, it still tastes the same, though the ‘carpet’ sponge seems a bit thinner now. They may have changed it a bit, as there is now a raspberry swirl through the middle.
All together now…
Roll-up, roll-up for some arctic roll!
The last desert on earth
At home with The Gluts
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We are going to breathe visual life into our songs and make some viral videos for t’internet. The Gluts are preparing for a short artists residency at Camden Arts Centre, where we will have the opportunity to dress-up in green metallic body suits and spend a fews days shooting and editing video.
We are going to be making viral videos for our songs: Roast of Greenwash, Spaghetti Carbonorama, GMNO, OilY, Fresh Worm Salad (can’t remember its real name) and Arctic Roll. Prep is going well. We will also be screening our musical documentary The Gluts Go To Copenhagen on the evening of Wednesday 18th August (7-8.30pm) – the event is free and all are welcome.
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The Gluts have been de-selected for the Super Farmers Market exhibition in June (see entry below on Minced Wool). So, no ‘Life Knitting’ rubbish piles for us. Part to do with an H&S issue of exhibiting rubbish in a gallery, part insurance. I’ve agreed to do something because I want to make a work about supermarkets, packaging and rubbish, but am obviously uneasy about it now.
But we will still persevere with the knitting, Gina is very keen. I think that life knitting in front of a pile of rubbish needs to be more exciting. What about the incongruity of life knitting at a landfill site? Or in a supermarket car-park? Millions of pounds go into designing packaging AND into getting rid of it – either through recycling, composting, landfill or incinerators.
In the spirit of research and our London to Oxford bike tour (happening later this year), I cycled from Oxford to Didcot along sustrans route 5 this weekend. The route goes past a vast landfill site just outside of Didcot (next to the power station). It was a godforsaken place – the underbelly of what we see on the supermarket shelves. Buzzards flying overhead, looking for this new carrion, hillocks with sheep on them that look like hills but smell of rubbish. The air thick with flies. Methane pipe systems that slowly release the highly toxic gasses from beneath the pile. Houses have been known to explode because of this toxic gas which is 25 times more environmentally damaging than CO2. One of the sites had a power station attached, which presumably converted the methane emitted by the landfill site to electricity. Another site had a chimney stack that seemed to be burning off methane at a very high temperature, while the one pictured below was set on the top of a hill, with the gas whistling out of its tubes into the air around us.
Meantime, there are plans to build more waste incinerators… .
Methane pipe emerging from landfill - this one whistled!
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Gina and I spent some time last week unravelling a charity shop jumper for its wool. We are collecting materials for a possible ‘Life Knitting’ performance next month – a circle of knitters sitting around a pile of rubbish. It’s not easy to unravel jumpers, but we think we have found a technique. The wool we ended up with looked more like mincemeat or the greying hair of an ageing Ronald McDonald found in a bath plug than a nice ball of wool.
Wool or mincemeat?
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Newsflash…Cafe Press! at Cafe Carbon the publication produced by Ana Čavić and Renée O’Drobinak aka The Ladies of the Press* on the night of our Cafe Oto gig is now available to download from their site.
The Gluts are thinking and planning at the moment. We are working out what to do with our video The Gluts go to Copenhagen, and spending time listening back to recordings, preparing to mix them down. We have also been asked to take part in an exhibition titled Farmers Market and are hoping to show The Gluts go to Copenhagen there. The premise of the exhibition is that participating artists have to use ‘materials’ found in supermarkets local to the venue. The Gluts have thoughts to organise a Life Knitting event – knitting, crocheting and crafting a still life of skipped food. In anticipation, Gina (queen of knitting and all things crafty) has booked us in for a crocheting course at Prick Your Finger in Bethnal Green. I’m hoping to learn how to crochet a matching teacup and saucer.
We are also thinking about organising a Cafe Carbon bicycle tour this summer. I think it will just be a mini tour, around the London and South East area – probably cycling no more than 30 miles per day for 4 or so days. I think we would play in the evening when we arrive. Pubs, houses, youth clubs, allotment societies… thinking to head out of London on the Sustrans route 6 toward Reading.
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