The Death of Disco

RIP not only Donna Summer late last week but also the Bee Gees' Robin Gibb yesterday, aged 63 & 62 respectively, both from cancer. They are not extensively represented in my record collection, but while immersed in late 70s new wave, krautrock and prog, I could still find time for these two peerless proponents of disco. 
Donna Summer's I Feel Love was, of course, A Very Important Record. I still have the original 7" from 1977 and the later Gary Cowley remixed 12". Interestingly, it came out during the recording of Low, and Bowie is on record as saying: "One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts on 'I Feel Love'... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right". Of course it was mainly Moroder, but without Summer's orgasmic tones (taken to extremes on Down Deep Inside), it would probably have amounted to nothing.
Perhaps I wouldn't have admitted it at the time (a guilty pleasure), but the the Bee Gees' tight-trousered falsettos were almost as compelling, especially circa Saturday Night Fever in 1978, the soundtrack to some clumsy forays onto the dance floor for anyone of my generation. 

Outsider Art

Much of the day spent with the Stegers in 798, but not work for once - just strolling around the galleries and shops, and finally got to see the last day of the Gu Dexin's retrospective exhibition at UCCA. Interesting guy: no formal training, my age so grew up in the Cultural Revolution, after which he started producing weird, 'outsider art' drawings & paintings of many-breasted humanoids. He then got into repetition and large installations of fruit, meat and plastic before giving up art altogether in 2009 and returning to lead a 'normal life' in the same residential Beijing compound he grew up in. 
Anyway, interesting show . The large steamroller-with-apples installation (see pic) has decomposed and now stinks to high heaven. 
Talking of squash, Markus and I had a game - my first for a year - when we got home.   

Untitled

This morning I met Peter Aspden, a journalist from the FT, over breakfast. He's going to write a piece on UK Now, so we're briefing him and showing him around. But aside from that, it's my first free weekend since the festival began. Meanwhile Marcus & Caroline are doing a 10km run along the Great Wall. The question is, will Marcus and I manage to watch the Bayern-Chelsea Euro Final tonight at 4am or whenever. I doubt it...

They're back

From an empty home, our flat is all of a sudden full of people. Alyssa & Naomi are home from their school trips, Liz is back from Shanghai (refreshed), and the Steger family are visiting - all arriving at about the same time. Lovely to see everybody. 

Party time

Eight weeks into the festival, we finally got around to having a launch party this evening at the Ambassador's residence. We'd had small 'regional' launches in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chengdu, but this was the big one. 700+ people packed into HMA's house and garden with performers on stilts, the inevitable string quartet, a jazz band, DJ Goldierocks, VJ Noise of Art, fish & chips, caterers with groovy UK Now aprons... 
It was a heck of a job organizing, but I've got to say it went fantastically well. Good mix of Chinese & Brits, Important People (Jeremy Browne MP, Minister for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, dropped by on his way back from Korea), Beijing's arts set, sponsors, media... Really good atmosphere and thank you God for the weather. The security guards at the gate said it was the biggest thing that had ever been done there, and they're the ones who really know. Afterwards a dozen of us headed to the nearest bar, commandeered a table on the street outside and drank till 2am. Relief.

Water into Wood

Naomi's turn to go on her residential - to Wulingshan, north-east of Beijing; as excited as her big sister. And Liz is off as well, to Shanghai for a couple of nights. So I'm on my tod for a bit.

But no peace for the wicked. Amongst everything else today, we had Michael Craig-Martin in town. He's judging the special UK-China John Moores Paintng Prize in Shanghai but has popped up to Beijing in connection with our Olympic Posters exhibition, interviews and I did a talk wth him at UCCA. Nice guy. He's best known for teaching Damien Hirst and the YBA set at Goldsmiths, but of course has a large body of his own work behind him, starting off with An Oak Tree, which comprises a glass of water on a shelf and some text below - the latter 'proving' that the glass of water is in fact an oak tree. The rest of his work is rather less austere and a whole lot more colourful. One thing I didn't know, however, is the fact that he's quarter-Chinese through his grandmother or great grandmother, I forget which.

8

So Naomi is 8 years old today. A low-key affair really as she had her party last Saturday and Alyssa's not here. But she opened prezzies this morning over breakfast, Liz took cupcakes into school for the class and we took her out for dinner at a restaurant of her choice. "I'd like to eat Thai". Then Thai it shall be.