The Jewish News

Maybe because of my exposure to things Jewish before coming to live in London (in 2004) was practically non-existent, I can’t help having a heightened sensibility to notice Jewish things around.
It’s the good thing about having an outsider’s view; it makes you be more receptive, more aware. Although, in saying that, it makes me think also of how many other things I might be taking for granted, for I’m probably as much an outsider as an insider here.

Anyway, here you are a testimony of ethnic identity, Jewish in this case, still playing a defining role for many people. Also, by the way, a visual record of advertising performing phagocytosis on a black cab.

Apart than that, want to hear the latest (and hyperlinked) Jewish news of this blogger’s life? Probably not, but I’m telling you nonetheless:

• A colleague has recently moved to Stamford Hill to find he was among the largest Hasidic community in Europe.
• The same colleague told me of his surprise at having spotted an overtly camp “black hat” (colloquial term for orthodox Jewish geezers) walking around Soho. Or was he maybe a bearded hipster?
• A non-Jewish acquaintance has just married a Jewish man.
• I’m becoming a big fan of bagels; maybe it all started with the hot salt-beef bagels of Brick Lane.
• I’m also a big fan of Larry David, from whom I've learned more about Jewish things.
• But if you heard the story about the hole in the sheet through which to have sex (and you may have if you are a fan of Larry David too), know it’s a myth, sorry.

Shalom now.


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JN Media Group: The Jewish News
Wood Green, N22
London

Look out!

I titled this blog ‘Ads in my way’ in reference to advertising placed in the public space, i.e. placed in people’s visual space. So a certain metonymical construction was at play there: the ‘way’ in ‘Ads in my way’ was actually meant as ‘visual way’; hence, physical 3D space taken for visual 2D space.
Lo, in this post which you are now reading the figurative has become actual: the above featured, just around the corner from where I live, is literally some ad in my way. One wonders what lack of common sense or minimum attention or basic regulation is needed to approve the placing of this piece of ‘street furniture’ in the middle of the sidewalk in everybody’s way.
One doesn’t need to be pushing a baby buggy, riding a mobility scooter or have visual impairment to find the advertising furniture very inconvenient.

May this perhaps serve as some sort of illustration of what I meant with the blog title. Doing the metonymy deconstruction journey back, advertising in the public space comes most often as an invasion of the public visual space, typically without people’s consent, yet with the (reluctant or less reluctant) collusion of institutions entrusted to manage that public space on behalf of the people. Thereby, an instance of the increasing desecration of the public realm.

It could be said that you could choose not to look at public advertising, but it’s not just that advertising in the public space is these days so pervasive, it also seems that you could smash your face into it if you didn’t look.

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High Road, N22
Wood Green
London

The Beatles. Now on iTunes

That’s the IMAX cinema viewed from my office window these days. Any time I dare look out, I find myself watched over by those four frozen gigantic icons; a rather unsettling feeling, I must admit.

Unsettling also that the IMAX cinema (part of the British Film Institute (BFI), a public cultural institution) is increasingly using its billboard space not to advertise currently screening film, but to generate income from hiring it out to external parties: there we’ve now got the Beatles courtesy of Apple iTunes, but from my memory I retrieve, among many film-unrelated products, cars, clothing brands, ice-creams and chocolate bars blown up to the impressive scale the IMAX offers.

The BFI charges £120,000/fortnight for the IMAX 360 degrees façade to interested advertising parties (as gathered from a colleague of mine who recently made an enquiry to place an advertisement there). Without knowing much about the BFI’s finances, I can only guess that renting out that space must be the BFI’s most profitable line of business. Of course, as a public institution whose funding has particularly been cut recently (what not?), it’s difficult to reproach the BFI for seeking the extra income. Thus, I’ll reproach the Establishment instead for insidiously stepping up the shift from the public to the private, leaving the balance between freedom and equality in the hands of the market, demoting citizens into consumers and, as I see it, for renouncing the aim of solidarity in favour of individual profit.

The Beatles appropriated by Apple, public culture appropriated by the logic of the free market…, and me not being able to do much more than just avoiding my office window these days. I never thought that we were so close to do the right thing, but I can see that we are now in fact getting further. Rather unsettling, I said.

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Apple iTunes: The Beatles. Now on iTunes
BFI IMAX Cinema, Waterloo
London

Return to Narnia this Christmas

Christmas, that special time of the year to remember with nostalgia the time when street Christmas lights simply meant 'Christmas'.

Now sponsorship has altered that meaning.

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20th Century Fox + Walden Media: Return to Narnia this Christmas
Regent Street, W1B
London 

Hire this van & driver

It doesn’t get much simpler than this, advertiser and advertisement close to be the same very thing, will and action almost merged in one…, the zen of advertising!

And as much as the media is the message, the no-frills approach to advertisement conveys the characteristics of the service offered: no promises of fancy uniforms, of booking fees, VAT added, card payments or for that matter no promises of insurance, liability, statutory rights, etc. What you see is what you get, indeed a British classic.

So there you go, gotta love the 'man & van'!

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Van & Driver: Hire this van & driver
London

"There is more to life than increasing its speed"

This poster is part of a wider project called ‘What is the city but the people?’ undertaken by Art on the Underground, the official arts program of London Underground, whose aim is to engage with the public by presenting contemporary art in the Tube.

The project ‘What is the city but the people?’ gravitated on a booklet of the same title compiling famous quotes; the title itself being a line from a Shakespearean tragedy.
The booklet was passed on to train drivers for them to read to customers through the trains’ PA system. The point being, I guess, to raise a smile and even some philosophical questions among the Tube’s passengers.

Pleasant as it is to be greeted by the Mahatma’s wisdom and encouraged to smile –and maybe to think too– for a purpose different of buying, the Tube’s sponsored art initiatives are inescapably that: sponsored. Thus, to some extent they are subject to London Underground’s agendas and will always work to create a positive view of the Tube amongst its customers; lo, the cause of marketing.

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Art on the Underground: "There is more to life than increasing its speed"
Wood Green Underground Station