Alan Read

Packing my Library. In a reversal of my favourite essay by Walter Benjamin images from the Performance Foundation Archive before it moves: “a relationship to objects not emphasising their functional, utilitarian value but studied and loved as the scene, the stage of their fate”. – at City of London, London

World’s End (& its lovely theatre), has always been nicely distinguished by its distance from Sloane Sq, at the raffish end of King’s Road. Last night Ioli Andreadi, doctoral alumni @kingsartshums was back in town from Athens with ‘Bone’, a timely reminder of Artaud’s prescience.

Litigation-averse US museum would warn “Do not put head through loop” (as they did on roller-towels in 1970’s public loos), but @Tate is fighting its own glorious losing-battle with a risk-loving half term crowd who have occupied Tarek Atoui’s truly immersive sonic-field ‘HOLD’.

After several visits without & today with students, to Ana Mendieta @Tate, amongst so much of prescient, ecological grace and pedagogic inspiration I’ve returned again to a small hanging ear-piece with the deceptively low-key ‘Untitled (Soul)’ the only hint of true, quiet beauty.

It’s not quite our beloved La Rambla yet where we spent the early nineties hanging at the Opera Café. But that’s principally because we have little of the Catalan’s confidence when it comes to reclaiming their streets and we lack the Adjuntamente’s passion for trees. More please.

My brogues might be too clunky for the Ritzy given my erratic moves, but a pair of Crossovers would do the job nicely if there’s a nine out there going. They are psyched to have Hermione back on the decks and I’m psyched to have another go at the shuffle I debuted at the Rivoli.

T.S.Eliot might have written part of ‘The Fire Sermon’ from this windswept shelter, but was spared having to ‘connect’ with Anthony Gormley’s vertical slight of a human in ‘Another Time XXI’ 2013, which for me expects too much under the Hunter’s Moon and will be removed by 2030.

Never visited ‘Dreamland’ in Margate until today. Yvonne Stagg left her ‘Wall of Death’ at the Kursaal in Southend and us behind in 1974, and within 3yrs had lost the life spirit that we knew her for. Her last note read: “I can’t see the lines on the paper. It’s no good Terence”.

‘Something Missing?’ from Sophie Calle @TCMargate includes ‘’The Lockdown Picassos’ (2022), ‘The Blind’ (1984), and appropriately ‘Turners’ (1994-) that were lost by Tate. But it is JMW’s peerless ‘Waves Breaking’ (1840) that remains with you on a squalling day on the Lee Shore.

‘Nina’ @battersea_arts last night gave us @kingsartshums so much to think about we adjourned to the unheimlich delights of the @FreudMusLondon to dwell upon ‘object love’, ‘fee association’, the ‘talking cure’ and Freud’s home movies graced by his Chows. Projection/Protection.

Caroline Williams & Deborah Pearson have engineered a meta-theatrical apparatus within a cod-drape prosc-arch that like Testo and others before makes @battersea_arts just the kind of place I like to sit in the dark with students looking forward into futures worthy of performance.

Despite being widowed before I was born I’d never seen my mother, an infant school teacher, cry ‘til the day Aberfan news arrived at our Essex home on the far side of two countries. It’s a memory of corporate indifference that reaches to Grenfell & beyond. theguardian.com/tv-and-radio…

Well, we grew up with the masts, ‘The Unfathomable Ship’ as Uwe Johnson called it from his Isle of Sheppey redoubt was our measure of life’s contingency (for those of us in Essex at least), and swimming the estuary will be just that bit less unnerving now. theguardian.com/uk-news/2026…

I’m not sure when Joseph Beuys proclaimed “Jeder mensch ein Künstler” he had in mind Bob Dylan & Johnny Depp, but they’ve somehow arrived in South Moulton St together which conspires to heighten the considerable distance between their musical & acting talent and their ‘painting’.

It’s not just that @kingsartshums is blessed by two Woolf scholars, it’s that Anna Snaith & Clara Jones write with such style, and when choosing a pub for their shared book launch know Bloomsbury borders well enough to bring us together at the wonderful Marquis of Cornwallis.

Jo Morton @Artangel welcoming performance students @kingsartshums to the Maughan Library they thought they knew, except being Artangel they have found a way for Terence Gower to work with @KingsCollegeLon archivists to reveal the first purpose built fireproof building in London.

Jump for joy the incomparable Jake Xerxes Fussell brought his southern Georgia song book back to Union Chapel tonight where he sat back and melted into his music like only he can. ‘The River St. Johns’ rolled off the apron and swept a packed church away. Modest, marvellous human.

My voice was ‘stolen’ by far-right Marystroyka in Moscow, and I’ve been chasing it for a while. The deeply sinister ‘Cold Sweat’ tonight, beautifully performed by ‘lip syncing’ @ForcedEnts @southbankcentre is as good as I’ve seen them in 42 yrs. How great they are back in London.

Just finished a book called ‘Pathology’ so wanted to hear Bill Callahan sing Pathol O.G and he did along with ‘Let’s Move to the Country’ and much else @RoundhouseLDN for a packed house. Echoes in the foyer of so many great nights here with Rustaveli & Illuminatus! What a venue.