Just before my holidays I was at the Merzland : Kurt Schwitters in England conference at Tate Britain. The conference was a mixture of art historians, critics and artists brought together by a common interest in Schwitters’ work and a desire to see his importance and influence fully recognised with a particular emphasis on the unfinished Elterwater Merzbarn. Among the participants were John Elderfield Chief curator of painting and sculpture at MOMA NY whose 1985 Schwitters exhibition and book played an important role in the revival of Schwitters’ reputation and who correctly placed the Merzbau at the heart of his art. Also present were Elizabeth Burns Gamard and Gwendolen Webster – both familar to Stunned regulars – Zvonimir Bakotin whose spoke about his VRML model of the Hannover Merzbau, Karel Dudesek of VGTV on the Kurt-Schwitters.org site and his hopes to translate it into english and the influence of Schwitters on new media art. While there was too much to go into here I must mention the fascinating presentation of Fred Brookes who as a student was part of the team the team from the University of Newcastle led by Richard Hamilton, which undertook the mammoth task of removing, restoring and preserving Schwitters’ Merzbarn. The Tate had been offered the Merzbarn but had refused it on the grounds that it was impossible to move.

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Back from holidays to discover 8000 spammed comments on this blog – I have comments disabled so you can’t see them but they’re still on the system and I guess I’m going to have to figure how to get rid of them, at the moment deleted this entire blog seems like an option.

Stunned is on holidays until the end of July.

I spent a busy weekend in Brussels and Paris, on Sunday I caught the last day of Rock Werchter for my money one of Europe’s best music festivals and saw the Pixies, PJ Harvey, Air and lots more, Bowie was due to play but cancelled but that wasn’t such a disappointment, even though I’m a big fan of old Bowie every time I’ve seen him live it’s been a let down.

Glastonbury mud sells on ebay for

Carole Coleman’s interview with George Bush is getting huge coverage all over the interweb, watch it on real video here

A nice art project from Lyon (officially endorsed) fake road signs placed throughout the city.
And from England a gallery of slow down signs designed by children and displayed under the speed limit signs in 20mph zones.