Filofax 1995
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28.11.95 / 01 / zaha hadid at the riba
This was a hot ticket. Zaha Hadid was giving a talk at the RIBA, featuring her Cardiff Bay Opera House designs. At this point she was famous for her neo-Constructivist projects but had built very little. Of course she gave us her best diva act, swathed in black with husky voice.
Hadid's drawings can be hard to understand, because of the complex shapes and layering. She took us through the Opera House second scheme, and it became clear that it was carefully and functionally thought out. Sadly the local politicians became afraid that it was too 'elitist' and risky, and cancelled it. A more conventional auditorium was later built without the 'Opera House' label. This was an enormous mistake, because Hadid's building would have been a major tourist attraction and icon of Wales. There are always a thousand voices denouncing anything radically new as a waste of money, not seeing how much money the new thing will make in return.
09.11.95 / 01 / email
Diary note to email my brother. The office didn’t yet have email although we worked on CAD. I didn’t have a computer at home. So it must have been at Cyberia, which was ten minutes walk from my office. I first went there having read about it in Wired. I could email my brother in Cambridge, and we could see that the email had gone around the world to get there via Sao Paolo and Berkeley. Other than that I was just nosing around the latest sites on Netscape.
Cyberia was a hangout for cyberpunks and technopagans. Artificial dreds in purple and white. One guy had stuck self-adhesive plastic bathroom hooks on his shaved head. I wondered how it felt to pull them off.
24.09.95 / 01 / hg
HG was another huge and complex work of installation art, in Clink Street vaults when they were derelict. You were met outside in the street, and invited to step through a small door, not knowing what was inside - and found yourself in 1895, in a candle-lit dining room from which the inhabitants had seemingly fled halfway through a meal. A clock ticked in the silence. No explanation. You opened the other door and found yourself in the darkness of the vaults. You walk towards the patches of light you glimpse in the distance.
Each vault contained a theatrical set-piece. A body, illuminated by a shaft of light. An inaccessible garden, in the distance behind bars. A room with rows of hospital beds, and open drains filled with blood. A flight of arrows suspended in mid-air, seen through a hole in a wall. And so on. It seemed to have something to do with the First World War, and HG Wells, and time and memory. Exact meanings were elusive, but it was like a series of dreams, or a movie with the words and actors removed.
09.09.95 / 01 / orkney again
On 25th August I went to Grimsby to see relatives, then from there to Orkney 1st-9th September. It was hot and sunny all the time I was there, as if I had gone south not north. I explored the islands as much as I could, by ferries, buses and walking. The nights were short and light, because it is as far north as Stavanger or Stockholm. It left me with a desire to go further north, to see the midnight sun, which I did in 2004.
12.07.95 / 01 / mouse failure
‘Mouse failure’ 3.5 hours on timesheet.
04.05.95 / 01 / self-storage
Self-Storage was an exhibition in a huge self-storage warehouse in Wembley, put together by students from the Royal College of Art and curated by Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. Visitors walked what seemed like miles through a labyrinth of corridors to discover little installations in some of the units - all sorts of random stuff. There was a point where one came into a lobby, after an hour of walking - and realised that this was only half way through. And you plunged into another set of corridors.
One room had the artist floating in a tank of warm water, using breathing apparatus. One had a bare lightbulb and a chair, like an interrogation room. At one point you were invited to tap on some pipes, and this would be responded to by someone tapping on the pipes in another room somewhere. You had to make up your own mind about what it meant.
Brian Eno: "...that's the real idea of Self-Storage: to take a vulgar, secular space and charge it in some way. It's meant to say to people: you can do it, too... it's really not that hard."
20.04.95 / 01 / wired uk
I bought the first (April 1995) issue of the UK version of Wired, and had every issue until the close of the UK version in March 1997. I kept them all for a few years, but then got rid of all except six and some torn-out sections. I wish I'd kept the whole lot now. It shaped my worldview to a fair degree during that time, as any magazine read constantly would do. I'm certain it shaped my approach to alt worship, when I got there.
xx.xx.95 / 01 / dull church years
1991-1995 were the dull church years. Property committee stuff, making the monthly newsletter, a homegroup in Dorking, church pantomimes - scenery, lighting, publicity. Little in common with the (very nice) people around me. By 1995 I was praying to be rescued.
