LMReview

/ editorial: to unplug -- (and plug to facebook?) /

/ absolutely goods / / interview with helene kazan /

/ krazy klouds: arts and comics // photography: london circus 2010 /

/ not for profit space: tropic corridors /

V i s i o n s t e c h n e a n d b a c k g r o u n d o f a n a r t i s t o n t h e w e b

LMReview n.6 - 2010

LMReviewS U M M A R Y(issue no. 6, 2010)

EDITORIAL page 3ABSOLUTELY GOODSWinds of crisis and sunset, notes on economy and custom in 25 steel tables page 6INTERVIEW WITH THE ENGLISH ARTIST HELENE KAZAN Louise Ashcroft talks with the artist about nomadism and deterritorialization page 10COMICS’ KRAZY KLOUDFrom the crazy clouds of comics often falls a black acid rain page 17PHOTOGRAPHY: LONDON CIRCUS 2010

The world’s umbilicus in a diary page of photographic microtrip page 22TROPIC CORRIDORSA non-profit space for mobile edged events page 27

COVER IMAGE: HELENE KAZAN, DRAWING TERRITORY, 2009IN THIS PAGE: LORENZO MARCHI, LONDON CIRCUS, 2010. ______________________________________________________________________________Web editor: Lorenzo Marchi.All rights reserved. For a publishing request of articles please send an email.Thanks to the authors for not proprietary images.Email address: lorenzomarchi@mac.com

V i s i o n s t e c h n e a n d b a c k g r o u n d o f a n a r t i s t o n t h e w e b

LMReview n.6 - 2010

Editorial

Lorenzo Marchilorenzomarchi@mac.comwww.facebook.com/llmarchi

o unplug. Increasingly, day after day, I feel inclined to unplug from the

news of the present sta-te in which we are im-mersed, almost a volun-tary blackout of selfsen-sitivity and recovery of a gravity center. There is an impulse to stop, to seek the essence for ourselves. And get rid of digressions, unnecessary discussions, surfacing provocations and sub-stance inconsistencies. A stopping with tv gossip, with the newspapers frontpages, with the great and "banned" caul-dron of the network, for

Tthe control of the floo-ding waves of emails. A stopping with papers headers in disagreement concerning their mutual titles. With politics spea-king of itself and its pro-blems, as if the electoral mandate was to take care of themselves. A leading class that absorbs resources to perpetuate itself, amoeba ready to burst and leave only fragments of his slimy. I could transfer these re-flections as they are to the art system. Even he-re the advertising, essen-tial to the survival of magazines and websites, is pervasive and only a few newspapers balance it with quality reflec-

tions. I realize that I di-scontinuously read the art reviews, an issue eve-ry four, I quit or take part in artistic awards and fairs an year every three, I visit galleries

more selectively. Because the system is a steamrol-ler heavy and blind (so-meone even calls it free market), and I feel the need for levity; because the advertising for ap-

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proximate enterprises produces a dissociating and pervasive effect as the hammering commer-cials do on a tv movie, because seeing the works of the selected for awards gives the im-pression of being in a playroom filled with well-known shoulders and cheaters. In this sense, the art system is not better than other sy-stems (the music scene, communication, politics, mass tourism). And it's speedy traveling, in paral-lel with these, on the road of spectacle and arrogance. Maybe even on a Sunset Boulevard. I'm not sure that circuits like Facebook could be an alternative, at least for the moment they are interactive and under the control of all.

***Last-minute-art. There's nothing wrong in choosing a last-minute-art. Last minute trips solve a need for those who haven't time or cannot plan in advance:

with the freshness and agility of a momentary inspiration, with the advantages of discounted conditions, with the no-velty of the unexpected . Why programming on a weighted basis needs, sites, features, habits, even when everything is changing so quickly and we could not find there that beach so clean, that inn so cheaply, those neighbors so cute? Then there's the thrill of disrupt the plot, of mi-xed cards, the hazard of throwing the dice. Being not surprised if finally minimal amounts out-come. It 's so for some young artists: good, pre-pared with instruments, sparkling in techniques and materials. So it is for many other artists in times of crisis, when we consider that for survival the need is to beat an aesthetic track of the surprising and the attrac-tive to realize aspira-tions, careers and shop-ping bills.

In the 1929 crisis in the U.S. during the months that accompanied the speculative bubb-le and stock sha-re fever, a funny song was well-known, where the protagonist likened the rising value of the sha-res to the increa-sing estimate for the beloved. The song not only was forgotten but

the whole story of the crisis has not served to protect against disa-sters, as we see those who no longer have a job. It's really pleasant to be involved in present and trends, but it agrees to a few, if then the pre-sent shows his teeth.

If we read an art magazi-ne a few years old, we see that it's full of disap-peared artists and galle-ries, public initiatives that seem empty of meaning, winning ones came out from anonymity and then turned into anonymity. As for the budgets of agencies last-minute granted by tourists, there is an economy of private and public galleries, ar-tists and collectors, cul-tural centers and auction houses that sails under the influence of these winds or gusts of survi-val. The speed of a wing is stronger if runs before the wind. Where the wind goes and leads us does not really matter. You can always sink away (so to speak) far away from the world and debt

collectors in some atoll, or closer (beyond Alps) in the waters of a lake, like Lugano; or on dry land, at a bank branch in San Marino or Monaco and Liechtenstein.

***Great mediators. I do not care to limit or define art, then I can not even do that, except in narrow areas and only in its making. I always scruple to make judgments on the artists, even after having read catalogs well done. The artists' work is complex, and we are almost never before systematic docu-mentation. Art for me is not very visible, what artists do has to be ex-plored and investigated. Instead to others art is the visible, what is expo-sed. For others too art it's what it's best sold. The idea of art does not necessarily coincide with the art system, as well as the idea of justice has never coincided with the justice system and its actuators. Certainly when we are faced with a work of art bought and paid its price for passion, we expect it there be a minimum correlation of senses and senso (mea-ning) between the artist and the collector expec-tations, or between the author and the consu-mer. I think it's an answer that even a single work of art must provi-de in times of big media and big brokers. Despite its problematic nature.

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***Short wave, long wave. It is not easy to define mobile scenarios if you do not have dynamic indexes, continuously updated and with a sy-stematic basis. The sur-veys, for example, are constantly updated. In economics, many statisti-cal tables describe situa-tions that are months or years old. And then the-re's the primary problem to work on meaningful data, however. It is not easy to under-stand such guidelines of artists concerning sub-jects, techniques, mate-rials and other, when places where the con-centration of data such as art fairs can not pro-vide uniform data com-parable from one year to another. Too many varia-bles, too many factors are involved in each case. The same goes for the preferences of collectors and dealers. What I find in this period as difference in the ap-proach between my work and a general ap-proach of many propo-sals could be seen in terms of short wave and long wave. Remaining in the analogy, I see in many recent works a short wave, foaming, vertically reactive, the more agile in this difficult period; compared with a long wave, less flashy and less noisy, but driving hori-zontally, of stronger suc-tion. Not much, but I love the idea of being part of this underground movement: to be in permanent immersion, in

a universe that defies classification, probes, sensors. At a depth whe-re only the accustomed eyes can perceive life.

***The magazine pro-motes the prototy-pe. Six numbers and three years of life for LMReview are a mini-e-ra. Looking back I realize that the magazine, con-ceived more as a process than as a project, has promoted and promotes a production of prototy-pes. The need of the ma-gazine invited me to pass from a concept and out-comes designed on a 20-inch screen to a visible prototype production, with final size prints or volume. It takes me by hand, rather than forcing me. Gentle action, I'd say of female nature. Talking about prototy-pes, I mean more preci-sely series and bodies of work that have their identity, including realiza-tion, and simply are not developed in complete production. This freedom from the practical needs related to exhibitions allowed me to immerse in a period of intense and pure research. Use-ful, if I can count in these years about thirty pro-cesses, many completed, others still running. Who in the past wrote that art not visible have sim-ply no existence did not understand anything about making art and its protagonists, important or not they can be.

_______________

This issue opens with the presentation of the series ABSOLUTELY GOODS (25 steel en-gravings), with multimea-ning texts, often disre-spectful and enjoyed, about economic and cultural-historical envi-ronment in these last decades. *

The interview with He-lene Kazan (cover pho-to) is conducted by the nomadic London dealer Louise Ashcroft. The pro-tagonist of the striking installations is the light. *

From the clouds of co-mics has fallen an acid rain. Clouds are black and mad. They draw wa-ter from hidden tanks. From Herriman to Crumb, the sign that departs from mass cultu-ral mainstreams.

*

Photography is present. London Circus is a brief overview about my im-provised week in Lon-don. With a handful of images, accompanied by the notes of two diary pages.

TROPIC CORRIDORS is starting. With all expec-tations, the undefined and the certainties of an area of discussion and exhibitions non profit that wants to open to theoretical research and unconventional meetings. A chance for artists, cri-tics, curators. On Face-book the updates of the Autumn event. Stay tu-ned!

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A SERIES OF 25 STEEL PLATES FOR US AND THE ARCHEOLOGY OF POSTERITY: A PANORAMA OF AMBIGUOUS PHRASES-DIVERTISSEMENT ON ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL SYSTEM IN WHICH WE ARE IMMERSED

ABSOLUTELY GOODSrilogy. This body of work entitled ABSO-LUTELY GOODS, which I extended with a subseries called NOTES

FOR THE FUTURE, follows the process OPERA / ARTWORK star-ted since the first months of 2009. It could be still early to say whet-her it’s a step further in investiga-tion to make the whole process more stable, a real trilogy on eco-nomic environment with its art system. What is certain is that this reshuffling of the economic drags

Tquestions and revisions of the meaning that art has had in the last decades. With its sanctuaries in which were held the great feasts and where has prevailed that sa-cred symbol - that crucifix of the art system which is the price. If the artists will raise the flight (and the shooting) to distance from a spec-tacular and also labored breathing view, there will be material and reasons to give sense to the next decade. And maybe I'll have a tri-logy to be archived.

The false and lying gods. The ABSOLUTELY GOODS series hi-ghlights various aspects of our lives tied to the economic system in which we are immersed, and its basic element, the goods. An at-tempt to read beyond the recent winds of crisis on the art system, and looking at the human and envi-ronmental upheavals, and at the disturbing signs of sunset of an era. The artistic intervention involves mainly the textual language. The work started from a research ai-med to form, with the use of bra-chets, the polisenso (multi-mea-

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nings) in phrases of common use. The bracket acts on vocabulary, doubling or tripling the meanings of the whole sentence. As in the tran-sition from the term GOODS to GOOD and GOD. This conceptual passage - and here we find its pecu-liarity compared to word games - can be viewed simultaneously, and different meanings maintain their presence, for example by displaying the message GO(O)D(S). The propositions thus acquire an evocative power of meanings so-metimes strident, belonging to dif-ferent contexts. For a more careful analysis, the combination of con-cepts apparently divorced becomes useful to highlights unusual rela-tions and contradictory or transversal aspects of reality, always hovering between intuitive appro-ach and structured readings, between tangible phenomenon and invisible spirit, between concrete objects and religious or secular ideals.

The phrase THE FALSE AND LYING G(O)ODS identifies and calls the idols/gods with the goods themselves, in their persuasive and engaging capacity of advertisement, often tendentially false. Or the Good Shepherd, who takes on the appearance of the big brand or bank that sells its financial pro-ducts - great piper dragging behind him flocks of sheep-shareholders to the slaughter - in THE GOOD(S) SHEPHERD.

Reality and polisenso. In the polisenso and in its apparent con-tradiction, sometimes in surprising ways, emerges the complexity of the system. The language, in combi-ning contradictory meanings, has this power to highlight, with a spe-cific autonomy, unexpected but real connections and relations. With a critique not only regarding the li-mits of the social organization set by the economic system, with its imbalances and its recurrent crises. More generally we are in the pre-

sence of contradictions involving both the existential-individual and the socio-political choices. This is a very current, but also secular dia-lectic which has run through hu-manity also before capitalism. The struggle between spirit and mate-riality, between God and secular goods was well stigmatized by Francis of Assisi with his message and his life. His choice characteri-zed by a dichotomous passaging from abundance of wealth to fruga-lity and poverty, leaving comforts and property and conquering spiri-tuality and values, is evoked by the contrast GOODS-GOD in G(O)OD(S). A paradigmatic path of an antipatory backtrend compared to positivistic spirit of industrial development trends of the ‘900 that crossed the West, that are growing now through Asia, and will surely invest Africa in the near fu-ture. With achievements and rewards, but also with myths and illusions that this abnormal growth and distortion generated.

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*****************************************************************

In the polisenso and in its contradictions emerges, sometimes in surprising ways, the complexity of the system

*****************************************************************_______________________________________________________________________________________

The technical inter-vention. In poetry and literature the pure poli-senso, obtainable from a single proposition asso-ciated with different meanings, has been wi-dely used, with great evocative power, as in Shakespeare. In this body of work I acted for textual inter-vention to maintain a different approach from

the poetic-literary one, favouring the visual of a typical artistic context, to realize a simultaneous view of different mea-nings.

Technically, this action uses the word game cal-led "scarto di finale" (change of ending), as in the passage between GOODS AND GOOD, or with the "scarto di

vocale" (waste of vowel), as in the passage betwe-en GOOD and GOD, or both, in simultaneous G(O)OD(S). The brac-kets thus provide a per-ception that at first is visual. This type of si-multaneity can find a well-known homophonic parallel in the title of the play by Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.

The subtraction or the addiction of letters pro-duce a range of meanings inscribed in different cultural climates and in different economic con-cepts of the past and of the present. As in the perspective ambiguity of (GOODS) LOVE IS THE ANSWER, or in the different motivations of WITH G(O)OD(S) ON OUR SIDE.

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The homologating language.The word GOODS, taken as a symbol of the global economic system, is the magnetic reference from which the research star-ted. The word "Goods" it's a pole which attracts and repels at the same time, in its Marxian va-lues of use and exchan-ge, in the daily use of monetary value, which is sovereigning our quality of life. The advertising shapes of goods, for example, reflect both a useful and informative content often sensorially pleasant, and the intrusi-ve ubiquity in different times and contexts, as the spots in the scene of a dramatic movie or in a journalistic report. The centrality of goods per-vades trading, human relations, entertainment, services, communication, all tendentially aligning to its measured value, the money.

In particular, with the growing influence of me-dia and advertising, the language is increasingly taking the role of ultima-te shape, of final form of goods, as a prevailing factor that moves us to buy. Writing is not inde-pendent from the ways

to represent commoditi-es, goods and services.

Hence I made the choice of collecting in the series ABSOLUTELY GOODS many popular expres-sions drawn from pro-verbs, sayings or ex-cerpts from literature and music texts, empha-sizing the integration and the global spread of the concept "goods", which can also involve those who are not in condition to buy and use those goods. But the concept culturally influences their behavior. We find, therefore, an-cient themes and critic questions as the one of Pasolini against the cen-tralization of the consu-merism society: he stig-matized its omnipotence in destroying, with the uniforming homologating language of goods and media, the languages associated with particu-lar local experiences, the peripheral historical cul-tures, the diversities.

The series also moves, with its polisenso, in the opposite direction as regards to trends post September 11th, which have somehow created a divide between an earlier period of philosophical

and behavioral relativism and the current era, cha-racterized by the urgent need of net and sim-plifying signals, even sim-plistic. So in art we can see the prevail of the aesthetic criteria and of the opportunistic beha-vior, functional to the achievement of the pri-mary economic goals.

Notes on used ma-terials. A final note about the chosen mate-rials. The series consists of 25 steel plates, corre-sponding to 25 different writings. The steel, as a material of humble structure, represents more the strength of what remains rather than the changing of ap-pearance, more the es-sential item of sentimen-tal value than the luxury and flashy goods. Chosen as tenacious material, to emphasize a constant dialectic of history that since Adam and Babel, through the various reli-gious messages, notably the Franciscan one, it comes to us with new problems but with old existential dilemmas. A look far away and, at the same time, inside the contemporary world.

Appendices and Notes for the Futu-re. The series ABSO-LUTELY GOODS has two appendices: a textual one in the form of artbook, that collects all the 25 writings. The se-cond appendix instead contextualizes the wri-tings, recovering the figu-re. The key to under-stand this image-text combination is in the word "future" present in the title. This future is not ours, the future we can imagine today. It’s the future of some historical personages of literature, art and politics, like Marx, Duchamp, Saint Francis or Warhol. There is essentially a shift in perspective when their future has become our present. A comparison emerges between expec-tations and reality, mas-ters and followers, ideali-stic vision and historical evolution. The distance from the protagonists of the past makes us wit-nesses of today, a little smaller, a little bigger, a little colder but even a little more surprised from incoherence of the present compared to to expectations and ideolo-gies of the past.

_____________________________________________________________________STARTING PAGE: the series ABSOLUTELY GOODS. 25 marked steel plates, 50 x 35 cm. , 2010PAGE 7: THE FALSE AND LYING GOODS. Series ABSOLUTELY GOODS . Marked steel plate, 50 x 35 cm. ,2010PAGE 8: GO(O)D(S). Series NOTES FOR THE FUTURE. Three digital prints on paper, 50 x 35 cm. , 2010

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THE NOMADIC LONDONEER GALLERIST LOUISE ASCROFT INTERVIEWING HELENE KAZAN: A POLITICALLY SIGNED RESEARCH ABOU T THE NOTIONS OF TERRITORY, OCCUPATION, SPACE AND CULTURAL GROW

Helene Kazan TALKING WITH LOUISE ASHCROFT

Helene Kazan, Drawn Territories. Trident Way Residence Project in London

Louise Ashcroft: What particularly struck me about the Drawn Territories project that you developed during our

Trident Way residency was the contradiction between your instinctive desire to possess space by imposing large

sculptural interventions and the fact that these interventions are then somehow deliberately erased or made fragile, as

if to confront their own impending disappearance. For example, your polystyrene pillars have an initial appearance of a

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much more solid, permanent material, which is then dissolved using light and shadow to bring out a ghostly feeling of

impermanence inherent in the polystyrene. Similarly, in your animation, you track a process of physically imposing the

same material onto a space which you have temporarily occupied (in this case a section of the industrial estate), before

removing and relocating it to the time-based space of an animation.

You occupy the site using powerful geometry reminiscent of the architectural structures used to impose power struc-

tures on urban space. You then confront this spatial hegemony with its own impending destruction. This process of

continual territorialisation and deterritorialisation reminds me very much of the nomadic spatial process advocated by

Deleuze and Guattari's 'Treatise on Nomadology', which they use as a metaphor for a politics of 'difference'; a politics

free from the hegemonic structures of hierarchical 'striated' space.

Do you see the architectural 'striations' in the Drawn Territories installation, or in your animation works, as symbolic

of political power structures? And is this continual process of physical occupation and deterritorialisation, of knocking

down and rebuilding, a political gesture?

Is this idea is your work related to your experience of architectural destruction and reconstruction in Beirut? Or is it

more of a reaction to Western Capitalist forms of spatial dominance visible in London's urban landscape?

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Helene Kazan: I find it really interesting that you have picked up on the territorial and deterritorial nature of my

work. Like me, my creative practice has a kind of dual citizenship, on the one hand it is an elegant exploration of the

parameters of drawing and sculpture, and on the other is a politically charged investigation into notions of territory,

occupancy, space and cultural growth.

In 2006 I read Eyal Weizman’s ‘Hollow Land – Israel’s Architecture of Occupation,’ I became fascinated by the introduc-

tory tale of the book which describes how Israel’s now largest outpost in Gaza manifested itself around a fake mobile

phone mast. This abstract snapshot of cultural adaptation and growth struck a cord, and I began to use my practice to

playfully and practically investigate these concepts of territory and occupancy whilst utilising the no-mans land of the

exhibition space. Having moved to England in the 80’s after a childhood in war torn Beirut, my growing awareness and

education of the situation in Israel, particularly through continuous media coverage in the winter of 2008, re-awakened

an experience I had originally been too young to understand. Aware that there is a clichéd currency in art addressing

politics in the Middle East, I’ve decided to avoid this minefield and instead examine the real practicalities of occupying

space and territory. This seemed most relevant, as it not only applied to my childhood in Beirut, but to the adaptation

of my life once I’d arrived in England, as well as life now in London.

Developing creative methods that were a bastardisation of processes used within architecture, I drew through the

exhibition space with massive concrete columns that I referred to as ‘marks’. These monstrous structures were often

thought to reference modernist architecture, but actually related to the half built or destructed architecture I’d grown

up with in Beirut. Also, although I simply saw these ‘marks’ as a series of three dimensional drawn lines, I became con-

sciously aware of a similar use of columns in many memorials like the Jewish Memorial by Peter Eisenman in Berlin and

most recently the 7/7 Memorial designed by Carmody Groarke in Hyde Park. This may have been an unconscious refe-

rence initially; however I now believe it reflects a relevant narrative to the work.

With the recent invitation from Departure Gallery to take part in a short three-week residency on Southall’s Trading

Estate; followed by the exhibition in one of the trading estates’ vast empty warehouses with 24-hour access to the site

and complete freedom of our exhibiting space I got very interested in this situation. When I visited the site for the first

time, it became apparent how foreign our presence was to its normal occupants, we as artists were in some way sta-

ging a kind of temporary foreign occupation. This became even more fascinating as over the weekends, the entire esta-

te would become deserted. To determine a rule that would give my work a physical boundary I installed my piece (ma-

de from a multiple of seven foot polystyrene columns) in one of the normally full car parks for twelve hours on a Sa-

turday. Photographing it every couple of minutes throughout this time to create a stop frame animation. A show I had

previously been in called ‘Trash Vortex’ as part of Hackney Wicked, had pushed me to move away from the physicality

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of materials like concrete, to use other materials and more temporary fluid mediums like animation. The shadows that

were created as an effect of my intervention in the car park became a set of coordinates I could use and recreate in

the gallery to give an imagined site-specific border to the work. I agree that the apparent contradiction between my

instinctive desire to possess space by imposing large sculptural interventions and then deliberately erasing or making

them fragile, is an influx process of territorialisation and deterritorialisation.

Focusing on the physical practicalities of your role as curator, what did you find was the difference in the challenges

you were faced with in Trident Way, and the most recent exhibition Trident Way 2: The Southall Project?

Louise Ashcroft: The exhibition 'Trident Way 2: The Southall Project' was meant to directly relate to the work in

the first Trident Way exhibition. It was in a neighbouring warehouse, which was very similar, but a lot cleaner, than the

first one and the show featured many of the same artists. For Trident Way 2, however, lots more artists were involved.

My plan was that these new artists would respond both to their context on the industrial estate and also to the pre-

vious exhibition as a social and artistic context in its own right. This layering of occupants; the existing group of artists

and the artists who joined the group for the second show, echoes the social space of the area around the estate, which

has an established population of Indian immigrants and a new influx of immigrants from other countries like Somalia. I

am interested in how a group of artists or a community can become a kind of 'site' in its own right; the people and

their activities become part of the place. This is why I like to run projects as residencies, so that individual practice

spills over into collaborative thinking and lasting connections are formed between the participants. This is something,

which is being lost now curators can simply select work from websites and organise shows by email. Whilst communi-

cations make it easier to form groups, I think you'll agree that a group show is always more interesting when the artists

spend time in the space that they share. This is what interests me about your practice. You find it very important, quite

instinctively, to live with the spaces you exhibit in and you become part of the activities happening around you in these

spaces.

In the first Trident Way project, interrelations between the artworks were extremely visible. There were strong aesthe-

tic connections and recurring ideas throughout the show, which brought the whole thing together in a uniquely cohe-

rent, yet varied way. In the second project, however, artists made smaller work and each work felt quite separate. The

feeling was more like an art fair and the sense of community was less evident in the show as a whole. Perhaps this was

because the group had changed and was much bigger, perhaps it was because the original group of artists simply

couldn't sustain the amount of time and obsessive, creative energy they were devoting to this isolated, freezing cold

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industrial estate in the middle of nowhere. Although a few of the artists continued to spend a lot of time onsite (I re-

member you staying throughout the night on a number of occasions), the second show was more like a normal group

show and most artists made work off-site and delivered it a couple of days before the show.

The incredible thing for me was how different these two shows were as a result of how their spaces were occupied,

despite the fact that the project set-up was virtually the same on both occasions. Even though some of the works from

Trident Way were developed in Trident Way 2, they felt like completely different works. Perhaps this appearance was

partly due to the aesthetic differences between the two spaces. Your piece in Trident Way 2, Helene, had many of its

original components, but on the pristine floor of the second space and in its glaring strip lighting, it had a completely

new atmosphere.

Perhaps the slick look of the second space changed how we related to it. Perhaps the large mezzanine, which dissected

the first warehouse like a giant pier, and the grubby floor which made it feel like an active industrial site of production,

made artists want to start building things in there, unlike the gleaming, empty vastness of the second space, which felt

new and unused and was therefore quite alienating.

How important is your commitment to spending lots of time in a space when you are making a site-specific work, and

do you consider all your work to be site specific? What does the concept of site-specificity mean to you and why does

it appeal?

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Helene Kazan: I have been thinking about this very notion in my practice recently, and it is a pattern that I have

noticed. Firstly because my work is normally quite large scale, it makes it very difficult to create in my studio, this is

where I believe I have deliberately over time created a process for my practice that is laborious but very exciting. I

would say my work is situation specific, as opposed to site specific, as there are more components than just the site

that give it its parameters, such as time of day, time of year, light, length of time in the exhibition space to name a few.

To explain more, I take into considering all these factors as well as the practical specifics of the space and let them

determine the outline of the work. Therefore, I can find myself working for many days in an exhibition space, as this is

part of the concept of the work, my physical occupation of that space for that time is also part of the work. Often, I

won’t know what the final product (the art work) will end up being like, I do plan and draw, but the process of making

the work is as much part of the work as the final product. I find it very important to learn from every exhibition that I

do, and to push its concepts further and further each time.

For that reason, I have found being involved in the working in these projects with you Louise, and Departure Gallery

invaluable, as the context of each of the exhibitions has enabled a unique development of process for my work. As well

as the exhibitions with Departure Gallery this year, I have been commissioned to do an installation for architects Me-

tropolitan Workshop in April, which will see a temporary occupation of their entire offices, and a solo show in The

Jerwood Project Space later in year. These will see this body of work develop in and for various very different spaces

and contexts.

Louise Ashcroft: Yes, I like the idea of situation-specific work as opposed to site-specific work. I think the concept

of a site being a fixed, permanent context is an illusion- spaces are always changing. An artist's presence in a space

changes the space and the concept of 'site' should not be understood as a static phenomenon in the way that many

early site-specific artists seemed to assume, but, ratheras a complex interplay of social, cultural and material relations

which change over time and differ according to individual perspectives. I will be continuing to explore and expand on

these spatial investigations in my curatorial projects this year. The next Departure Gallery show on the International

Trading Estate brings together over 40 artists, whose work responds to the idea of being in 'The Middle of Nowhere'-

playing with the paradox of being site-specific to being 'nowhere'. Helene will be developing a piece based on her own

architectural plans of the warehouse space.

Louise AshcroftDirector of Exhibitions, Departure Gallery7A Neals Yard, London - WC2 H 9DP

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gallery number 07531 006776mobile 07861 375101 www.departuregallery.com

Helene Kazan

www.helenekazan.co.uk

www.helenekazan.blogspot.com

2010Solo Exhibition at Jerwood Project Space, London - September ‘Off Cut’ Solo Exhibition at Metropolitan Work part of the London Festival of Architecture, London - June The Sheffield Pavilion as part of Mardin Biennial, Turkey - JuneAll Systems Go, Departure Gallery, Southall - JuneVauxhall Art Car Boot Fair, The Old Truman Brewery, London - JuneThe Chicago Boys ‘while we were singing they were dreaming’ performance and discussion event. The Showroom, Edgeware Road, London - MayCritical Practice ‘Market of Ideas - Event on Publicness’ hosted by Transient Art Projects. Chelsea College of Art and Design, London - MayThe Chicago Boys ‘while we were singing they were dreaming’ Two days of performance and discussions as part of the Edgeware Road Project for the Serpentine Gallery, Edgeware Road, London - April The Middle of Nowhere, Departure Gallery, Southall - MarchTravellers Box Project, Liminopia Blog - Jan

2009Trident Way 2: The Southall Project, Departure Gallery, Southall - December‘Fourdayslong’ - C4RD: Highbury Station Road, London - October‘Something I don’t do’ - Flowers East, London - OctoberTrident Way - Departure Gallery, Southall, London - OctoberCROFT & BALOGH PRESENT  BIG DEAL - “BOTOXED 69”, T C22 Pop Up Shop, London - September‘Trash Vortex’ - Hackney Wicked TangentProjects, London - JulyV22 Presents: The Sculpture Show, London - May

First Class BA Hons in Fine Art Painting: Wimbledon School of Art - 2001 / 2004

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LMReview n.6 - 2010

FROM THE CRAZY CLOUDS OF COMICS OFTEN FALLS A BLACK ACID RAIN

Krazy Klouds

THERE'S A CONSTITUENT THREAD OF CRITICS TO THE STATE OF THINGS IN CONTENTS AND E LANGUA-

GES OF COMICS FROM THE INITIAL FACTOR K. AN UNCLASSIFICABLE SIDE, A CREATIVE GENETIC ELEMENT ESCAPING FROM OMOLOGATION, A BOX OF FANTASY FROM WHICH THE CINEMA CONTINUES TO DRAW

factor. The two K of the historic character - among other things beloved by the art world - Herriman's Krazy Kat (four K, if we consider the sound

correspondences of the name of his action county Coconino County) recall the sounds of the very first Yellow Kid with the text written on the large shirt and not even in the cloud. It assonances with the similar initial sound of Comics and Cartoons. And it ma-kes you think of Crumb, with his dirty and irreverent sign. Hard so-unds to mark a live stream, consti-tuent of comics, often associated with a narrative form that privile-ges the dialogue among characters. Thus, between a reflection and

Kanother , you speak and philosophi-ze about small and large systems, drawing from reality and uncove-ring lightly and funnily the aspects of a critical thinking.

A K-factor as opposed to another prominent but more elusive letter/sound, that F having pressed the accelerator on Fantasia, with cha-

racters like Phantom, Flash Gordon and the Fantastic Four.

A phonetic feature related only to the English language? Nomen omen? The poet and the early twentieth century Russian writer Andrei Bely said: "K is a murderer". Is it a coincidence that in Italy of the '60s two characters-kings of the crime were successful with the names of Diabolik and Kriminal? A disturbing K factor, if then you co-me to the following American fear of K like Russian Kommunizm and the McCarthy's witch-hunt. A hard C sound that recalls the criticism, or Kritics - how negative of the consensus / common sense - ex-tended even in politics with the use of the term Amerika. This looking doesn't cancel the faith in positive

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changes or optimism of characters as Krazy Kat, to which were asso-ciated literary figures rich in idea-lism like Quixote or Parsifal, pure-hearted characters. This associa-tion, which borders in literature and in centuries before the exi-stence of the comics language, seems much more interesting if we read the criticism in terms of criti-cism of the entire system instead of a critics investing the formal lan-guage of culture, touched and enri-ched by onomatopoeia, exchanges of consonants, distortions of the graphic word. See the use of funny sounds and deformation of words in Krazy Kat: the references to the world of immigra-tion and the same slang of black communities is often linked to a social manipulation of the language. The official langua-ge codes are alte-red to express, by Herriman, a com-plaint of the false consciousness of those surrounding this magnetizing character, who looks around and makes a lot of que-stions about what he sees. An under-mining of conven-tions accepted passively - as the ideas of race and sex, which for the same Krazy Kat are innovatively unde-fined or changing in that America ra-pidly changing with the large immigra-tion of the first 900 - of the same modernity and technology that are put under di-scussion. The environments in the suburbs and slums highlights ten-sions between the characters of different social classes, injustice, hypocrisy, condition of outsiders, first trauma of east-west migration, which inspired later authors like Steinbeck and folk and blues musi-cians characterized by unspeakable lives like Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie. The same graphics

of Krazy Kat's action environment turn, the cliffs of the desert beco-me skyscrapers teeming with win-dows, the crowded New York is transferred to the New Mexico desert, in a surprising reversal of the issue of migration from rural to urban, and in a repudiation of the same urban landscape when in rea-lity it's the metropolis and the pe-riphery to deny the personality of the single and the landscape.

Alternative cultures, sub-cultures. Comics, once you go beyond the character and their stylized graphics, at once show

their sprawling often elusive of cultural references that sink in un-fathomable zones, in childhood imagination, and deep in the backgrounds of local environment and neighborhood subcultures, subjected in the past to many forms of coercive power, and now in the presence of the omologation by the media and the centralism. So why not just start from the dark side of comics? From the black and crazy cloud, full of acid rain, from

that dirty and corrosive sign made of fast graphic elements in black and white, from unorthodox cross-languages, from simple que-stions made by characters who illuminate and personify the social contradictions?

To some extent someone did talk about an alternative to the "high" culture, because of specific approa-ches of textual and graphic langua-ge, of diversity of codes, forms, rules. Comics, for their history and public, have in theirself this genetic element of criticism or attitude out of the norm. The methods of ap-

proaching readers of popular strips in Sunday's papers (first weekly, then daily for their suc-cess) differ from those of traditional newspapers rea-ders. Even in the creative authoring phase there’s a diversity: not by chance this ex-traordinary vehicle of expression cap-tures the interest and creativity of authors as intellec-tuals "sui generis", who perhaps would never be able to express their worldview in a book or com-municate their ideas in a confe-rence. "He doesn't like America, he doesn't like the world ..." says Fofi talking about a contemporary, Robert Crumb. And yet "... a con-

tinuity of watchful intelligence, which is continually sharpened and nourished with indignation for the state of things, for the absurdity of society we live and for a self-de-structive and destructive pleasure of its masses that are numb, rather than manipulated. Crumb still does not accept the world as it goes ...". A distrust in front of the "high" culture, which is always omologa-ting culture, a behavior existing

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since the times the power exists. This criticism occurs and has mani-fested in various ways, including the original and colorful ones: from Pasquino, the talking statue of Ro-me, to the improvised occupants of the Speakers' Corner. Since the sixties alternative cultures or sub-cultures have produced ideas that were then widely disseminated in the society (you can think about ecology, for example). But this mo-vement from below is always ba-lanced with assimila-tions and incorpora-tion by the "high" level, in a conti-nuous dynamic. Mass culture draws on alternative cultu-res and languages, on local slangs and borborygmi, on onomatopoeia, to feed continually on sap the advertising image and the eco-nomic logic.

Amazing in a cloud. Comics have ancient origins, they developed from oral cultures telling story and fables also represen-ted graphically, and constitute a combi-nation that is not the arithmetic sum of the components, but a symbiotic ex-change in the com-plexity of relation-ship between text and image. There is also the intense relationship betwe-en the teller and the listener to indicate the wonder that has put together the Feaci to Ulysses' chant with the wonder of children before the inextricable forest of Little Thumb (but does Shrek still make this ef-fect?), or involvement of adults in the Buck Rogers' and Flash Gor-don's futuristic landscape and in the Star Trek naive tv saga. Up to ad-ventures from exotic places of pure invention - in which geography is only a suggestive reference - as the Salgari's jungle or the swamps of

Okefenokee in Pogo, up to a land-scape full of skyscrapers like Got-ham City, a stylized portrait of the modernist and vertical metropolis.

Just the imagination generated by the story in words and figures sup-plements the vague knowledge in the young mind, finding fertile ground to draw unknown worlds, possible and impossible, compared to the real world thought by the pressing needs of adults. Comics

are recreation in the sense of fun (see, inter alia, the significant use of onomatopoeic language), but also re-creation, in the sense of new invention and re-writing that opens breachs in the walls of the narrow-minded everyday. Wonder and cu-riosity inextricably bind the reader to the invention of the author and the variety of the world. In fact, between the dark or forgotten past and the future horizons, between the environment of our existence

and unfamiliar surroundings, the world is in constant transforma-tion, unsuitable and ambiguous, elusive to investigations and educa-tion's criteria and often to power's control, a world always two steps ahead compared with our know-ledge. Both the wonder and the open attitude to enchantment and disenchantment are always present when we refere to the smiling in the English term Comics, a term related to the humorous origins of

this graphic language. Even the Italian term Fumetto (little smo-ke), alluding to the text balloon, draws a graphic element con-sistent with the playful spirit of this form of expression. And with confidence, familiarity, complicity codes shared betwe-en the author and the reader.

Moving clouds. In the comics there is a constant, the dimen-sion of lightness that started with an in-scription on the Yel-low Kid's shirt and with a suspended cloud moving in the sequence of the strip. And, after a century of creativity and pio-neering spirit that has produced countless scenarios of imagination, it's another type of mo-vement (but still a timeline) - the cine-ma - to pick up the baton but also to retrace the stories and the characters of

comics. The scene of the public and the media has chan-ged. And from the handicraft of authors and small publishers it goes to the deployment of computer graphic's technology in the Toy Sto-ry’s movie and dependent on spe-cial effects as the series of Batman and Spider-Man.

In fact the last decades of the '900 saw the final recruitment of the superheroes by the cinema, taken

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through the integration of punk cultures and subcultures of the 80s that gave the marked characteriza-tion in some dark series, like the one of the lucky character already dark for excellence, Batman. It's the beginning of a serious model of success and large investments, after the decades-long parody approach of medium-budget TV series, with characters in tights by end of year school play, with sober jokes and sketches as in the vaudeville, where imagination was completely forgot-ten.

The fading of gods. The time runs also for comics, and the su-perheroes who had success in the age of the unbridled economic de-velopment and the American mili-tary and cultural apparent omnipo-tence become old. The steeled op-timism loses its charming and you gradually assist to their deaths on paper, either temporarily or per-manently, from Superman to the latest Captain America. The Ameri-can dream dies (or transforms itself), following the death of the popular cartoons, which becomes an elite's cultural production.

__________________________

In Italy, since the 60s, and in parallel

to the success of popular characters

like Tex of Galleppini and Bonelli

(1961 is the transition from classical

and very skinny strip to the big format

editions), the publication "Linus" con-

quers its space on a large intellectual

and passionate circle: it opens to Latin

American counterculture and surrea-

lism. Here, in addition to the sophisti-

cated humor of the Peanuts, are pro-

posed authors of custom and political

satire as Wolinski, Feiffer, Sempé and

other authors of original graphic, later

cult-authors, as Crepax, Hugo Pratt,

Dino Battaglia. The oil crisis and the

rising cost of the paper in the 70s,

together with the liberalization of

frequencies - first the radio and then

the television - finally move the collec-

tive imaginary on the latter medium,

which gradually sucks almost all the

free time. In the following decade the

spread of computers and video games

seems to be the only competitor to

permeating tv programs.

__________________________

Among the icons that die on paper and return to live in new clothes and technologies in the cinema what is the balance to achieve? On one side the much gained in spec-tacle and audience, to the other the much lost in autonomous capa-city to create original worlds, at everyone’s measure. The essentiali-ty of the printed medium, the simp-le black and white, the limits of communication in a not yet globali-zed world (the few) surely have given much to previous genera-tions. All those scenarios, unique in richness and complexity, are now - and not casually - increasingly con-sumed by the cinema with the la-test technologies.

Bread, music and fantasy. If in the narration of the beginning was the Word, then the word has been integrated by the still image. To get finally to the moving image of the cinema, with its special ef-fects to replace those effects only traced by the drawing with simple but no less effective graphics tools. So the atmosphere is not left to the silence of the reader: it’s sup-plemented by the essential support of music. Some soundtracks and scenes related to songs and musical choreography by Disney are me-morable. No coincidence that the fantasy and the nonsense of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll at-tracted the interest of Disney since the '30s, with attempts of adapta-tion that resulted in the film of 1951. Here the music is the host with the record of 20 songs. Among the protagonists of the soundtrack there are the Platters, 4 other well-known vocal groups and the jazz orchestra of the U.S. Navy. We can also recall how the hippie culture was inspired by the book of Carroll with the song White Rabbit sung by Grace Slick of the group Jefferson Airplane, one of the most conceptual of the West Coast.

The movie, most spectacular and endowed with respect to the co-mics industry, has always liberally borrowed ideas from its poorest brother and now is replacing it among the younger generations, as a technique of storytelling through images. Are we losing the dreamy

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side of the story? The literary sug-gestion adventures of Corto Malte-se? The technical and funny quality of the comics nonsense? Let's not forget the Little Nemo by Winsor McCay for which Oreste Del Buo-no wrote: "Are we confident that, ultimately, did not say more about this stupid century, the '900, Mc Cay with Little Nemo in Slumber-land than Freud with The Interpre-tation of Dreams? "

The nomination of the icon. In art, with the spread of techno-

logy and mass culture, Benjamin posed the problem of the unicum and its copy with the text "The Work of Art in the Age of Mecha-nical Reproduction". And the pop art with Warhol, Oldenburg, Wes-selman, Litchenstein and Rosen-quist, along with the winning art system, make the simple but inno-vative process to appoint the exi-sting and well known comics icon, reproducing it in large measure but often with minimal variations. This operation makes this artwork con-ceptually unique, even if the art-

work is reproduced by printing or silk-screen technique in tens and hundreds of copies. When you enter the velvet art system, all the pieces become unique. Un-der the undisputed intellectual thrust of the system's addicts, the buyer, in the illusionistic ga-me, is convinced he holds a uni-que work. The icon of the strip industrially reproduced becomes one with the artwork, losing the reality of the copy and assuming the different reality of art, so well stigmatized by its lavish pri-ce.

Also art includes eve-rything. The icons of comics, having a public, have already gone through a formal distillation: in the concept phase there is the character studied by the authors; in the production phase, espe-cially if the character reaches the success over time, often the

grawing artists alternate and we see a graphic changing which distills more the figure, making the icon as is. The premises and promises of success for this assimilation are all present, and are not trascurate by the world of art and entertain-ment, which is facing a product already studied formally.

The icon is recognizable and has graphic quality: the characteristics of simplified sign, of essentiality, of effective message, of immediacy and synthesis of the verbal and graphic language are all components of impact. Only one nomination ser-ves, an approval by the market and the criticism. Moreover, the field stimulates the artists, which on one hand have a rough-hewn work; on the other, when the artist works with actions of transformation, as the decontextualization or the de-formation of the icon, the art sy-stem is able to add references and meanings, with the proposition of a mass icon and, at the same time, with an action of distancing from it. As when the character comes out from its strip and story to crystalli-ze in one giant picture on the wall of an art gallery.

The original social message of many authors, often poetic and subtly elusive, and characterized by nuan-ces and articulated implications, becomes in art an average and sim-plified message, with additional and subtractive meanings. The pha-gocytosis of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, of pin-up and figures from billboards by the pop art has inaugurated a new process of in-corporating the so-called minor iconography, reducing the gap between reality and art. All transverse processes and bastardi-zation break borders and make a freedom action. But it is also true that the transaction processing is producing a different thing from comics. And the comics art univer-se keeps its distances: its imaginary and narrative peaks, its specific language and its faithful readers, its techniques and its graphics, which always revolve around the drawing craftsmanship, are an unrepeatable phenomena of the ‘900.

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THE WORLDʼS UMBELICUS IN A DIARY PAGE OF PHOTOGRAPHIC MICROTRIP

Prologue. London is almost impossible to stop. On paper and in my mind. Sophisticated and muscular body with ten-tacles in motion, great octopus, sometimes even good-natured, swallowing and spitting in people flow, just like its Tube, if you exclude the slow-down Sunday. You can try to collect your thoughts but you cannot sum up: too many inter-pretations, too many events, too many layers, too many cities in the city, too many names and environments. A week doesn't serve even for a first impression: it's just a riot of color that comes to

mind, and that only pho-tography can stop in iso-lated images. Without judgments, without medi-tated relations among phenomena. And then the thread can only be the photograph's shot, and some notes of diary, describing essential movements and thoughts of hot trip. They can give an idea, a first page of a photo series that I hope will be long. Two days taken from a weekly di-ary, Thursdays and Sun-days.

Thursday. Time for the worst is slowing the trip, in a path all to be defined to visit some galleries

around Oxford Street. One that has exhibited for years the Italian art-ists is inactive, others have relocated or disap-peared against a data-base of only a couple of years ago. So this is a waste of time. The slings of the wind make me take a shelter in a Star-book bar, where I try to organize with the network informations the rest of the day. I decide to reach the Troubadour, the club where in the early '60s played Dylan, Tim Buck-ley and Sandy Danny. The pub is still active, there is music every night except Sunday. With nights of poetry and

dance. It 'a typical Eng-lish pub, or at least what a tourist expects from an English pub: the counter and the customers, with spoken sounds and ca-dences not quite intelligi-ble, small garden with an English bricks partition wall, including the wind blowing through the doors and flashes of sun-light taking me to a vague sweetness of summer just grasped for one who has grown up in the burning motionless summers of the Po Val-ley.

The weather is changed, however: the grey day by intermittent rain has

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turned into an endless sunny walk along the Old Brompton Road to reach the pub. In my head I’m driven by the Donovan's song calling me: "Come, take a walk in sunny South Kensington any day of the week." Is it a sign? The playlist of the pub is selected, and after more than two decades Catch the Wind do resound,

with the voice trailing and gripping emotions. In the pub I know Adam, an Italian-Australian of An-zio, who help me as in-terpreter for the menu. He says he arrived to London for his pleasure to work with people, he lives with his girlfriend in a small apartment with high rent, and says this is the question for who wants to move to a city

that does not reject any-one.

London is indeed a living organism, constantly reloaded by energy from young people, by for-eigners who play their cards often staking eve-rything they own on this city. A colorful humanity that makes of the provi-sional an accepted state, if only for survival, and

close an eye to the com-forts of life that more stable generations can accumulate. The hyper-activity is linked to pri-mary requirements and needs: you must know where to find resources, you must set new rela-tionships quickly. And only those with energy to do so may wish to stay and build his environ-ment for the future.

A long ring through un-known neighborhoods is taking me back by bus just to my strategic base of Notting Hill. Happy coincidence, when I think that my way to take the bus is often entrusted to intuition rather than to maps of the stops: a dangerous game, like a Debord's shift.

Sunday. I'm late in the morning time for a night of interrupted sleep, and the only thing to do was studying grammar. The program for the day is rough, I need input sig-nals coming directly from the places to inspire me. I recall reporting on the new art districts of north-east made by friends, the neighborhood that concentrate the more exciting London galler-ies.

You can travel almost alone on early Sunday tube. I stop at a station to chose the path and look at the convoy de-parting. In the station area there's the void, the silence, everything is padded and suspended. Going out from Liverpool Station through subur-ban streets I reach the market in Spitalfields, with trinkets and clothes. Then Brick Lane, full of improvised young junk sellers: at least there is a wide variety of stalls with ethnic cuisines from around the world. The East End is another Lon-don, more popular and slovenly, suspicious at first. But it turns out with great sensitivity and care. I decided to take advise

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by a bartender and a motorcyclist riding a Har-ley Davidson in good chat with a friend: what's the better neighborhood to visit taking pictures? They addresse me on Shoreditch rather than Whitechapel. Warning signs of local police ad-vise the people not to leave items inside the car. An elderly gentleman who had followed my contacts suggest me a party nearby. I follow the advice and take over. And from the Sunday's empty streets I hear at first from afar and then sharpen a festive music of violins. The approach really moves me. I need to wait to hold off the

emotion.I'm arrived at Arnold Circus in the an-niversary of the hundred years since its construc-tion. The peculiar ele-vated square platform with the bandstand in the center is surrounded by happy people sitting, talking, listening to music and dancing. The way around is teeming with games for all ages. A giant pye decorated with candy pictures realized by children has around curious and the first tast-ers. Chefs from various countries are explaining how to cook the plates. There is a conference in a nearby building which tells the story of the transformations made in

the urban district over a century. It's late in the morning and I'll leave the Arnold Circus Shar-ing Picnic only in the evening, tired but with a feather heart.

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Opening: Chinatown, 2010.Page 23: Backshop Window 1 and 2, 2010.Page 24: London, 2010. Below: Southbank, 2010.Page 25: Arnold Circus, 2010.On the right: Arnold Circus, 2010.On the left: Trafalgar Square, 2010.

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Dearest S.,

I'll mention something for the moment but then I will send you photo doc.

Please note that's my Studio, with a minimalist style, so practically empty and immediately adjustable to a neutral exhibi-

tion space. The atmosphere is architecturally interesting (that's what fascinated me when I chose it) because on two

floors, with an entrance apart and an unusual double staircase as an Y, both can be used. There is a space opposite to

entrance at the ground floor, suitable for projections. The country style is Tuscan if you want to, white walls, beams,

bricks, etc.. There are some libraries that remain and give a natural tone of inhabited, but the rooms are large and visible

from the passages, reminding a loft. The beautiful corridor at the top, which acts as a "ballatoio" - gives the name. It's

almost finished to be delivered to last details.

For the rest, as you can read on the board of Facebook, I do not put constraints on the projects so that everyone can

have his vision of the space. The only constraint can be the time of usage, as it remains a private space, so I thought for

the weekends. Note that all is inviting: the hills, the lake and the countryside, because it is a green area. There is a gar-

den and some outbuildings to renovate, like a two-plans dove storeys.

As I researched in heterogeneous ways, I would put them in projects with other artists in a non-profit logic, I do not want

to depend on public funding. Just pleased to involve different curators, because as you know I like the theoretical re-

search. Here, the site should be characterized by a cutting quality dictated by curator and artists. The network permit to

share communication in a real time way, following the dynamic of the event. Ask also for other info, I hope you'll be

pleased to visit the place.

See you soon, L.

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