Ruby Stark

Yesterday, I went to see the Dieter Rams exhibition at the Design Museum. I walked through London in the freezing cold and my new leather jacket and all I got was memories: booking a table at a former-squat cafe in Vauxhall for my old girlfriend, Cassette, and I; Matte telling me that she’d slept with that guy; sitting with Matte on some steps opposite Liberty’s on the first weekend she came to visit me in London, when she was head-over-heels in love with me; running with Matte along the south bank, through the rain, to the Design Museum to see the Jonathan Barnbrooke exhibition.

I liked Rams’s designs, especially the hi-fi equipment. He seemed to be a designer who thought appliances deserved their space in the home, rather than having to apologetically blend in with the furniture. However, you could see that even he would adorn old designs with his current pre-occupations: note the change from straight to curved record player arms.

I walked around in the cold for an hour and then went to meet Archigram, and his housemate and girlfriend at a Vietnamese. We troughed down some tasty food and then sat and talked in the corner of an underpopulated pub next to an expired log fire.

We then moved to a gay bar in Dalston that seemed to have a surprisingly number of straight people in it, and no hot lesbians. But, it was great to sit at a table, surrounded by friends who are all in the same moment and level of drunk and mood of party, laughing and pouring back beer as the bar raged around us.

We went back to Archigram’s and sat in his kitchen and drank a disgusting concoction called chai latte and then went to bed. I caught some sleep on a mattress in the living room, woke, went down and talked to Archigram’s other housemate about Australia and then ate toast with everyone.

Last week, I went to a memorial/celebration for a poet, AM, who died about a year ago. The Moms puts on poetry events for the council and, growing up, we would sometimes have poets staying at our house. Some of them became family friends. The poet we were celebrating was a sort of kind, mucking-in influence around the house. He joined in with our family activities – our friend’s gig, my Mum and step-Dad’s drunken supper parties – and spoke to us kids like we were adults. He was the poet mentioned in this post.

The event itself was a horrendous disappointment. I got no sense of AM at all. It was just all other poets and musicians reinterpreting his work. There were a few successful performances, but they simply succeeded on their own merit, rather than because they were “celebrations”. My Mum and our family friend and my Auntie seemed to love the whole evening, and I was baffled by their choices of favourite performances. My Mum asked me after the interval what I thought of the performance, I forced out a vacant, “Wonderful”, so I didn’t hurt her feelings.

Just as I was leaving the loos, I thought I saw Allure (1, 2). When I returned to my seat, I scanned the audience, but couldn’t see her.

On the tube home, I realised she was sitting opposite me. Fuck, man, this girl just keeps on turning up. A condensed history: we met via friend Hardcore Boy who fancied her, we kissed in front of him (what a dick), we met at least a year later at HB’s party, she pursued me, I had that amazing night at her party, she cut off contact, we somehow got in touch in London, she travelled the world for a year, and so it goes.

We had a great conversation, parted in Brixton and she said she’d Facebook me. We’ll see.

Yesterday, I went to see the Gustav Metzger exhibition at The Serpentine. It sucked. To me, when people take found objects and place them in an artistic context, they are removing their relevance. A burnt-out car means something to me when I see it on my street. But, when it’s in a gallery, the pompousness ascribed by the context saturates any significance that it holds.

I went to the exhibition with Corin, a girl I met just after I moved to London and who visited me in hospital and whom I DMed on Twitter after I got out. My original plan was to try and date her, but she is straight, so we are friends. After the gallery, we sat in Kensington Gardens and drank tea and talked about non-monogamy and Sleater-Kinney and teen films and how people maybe fancy an archetype and then will fancy other people purely because of their similarity.

I went to meet Min at my work in the evening so we could start looking for a place to live together (if I don’t move to Berlin). Afterwards, I hung out in the office and then got to Shunt for 10pm. I went to watch the livecoding, but what really blew my mind was the place.

I wandered around trying to find the entrance for a while, found it, got sent to the other entrance, got my driver’s licence recorded by Clubscan [a sick computer program that uses IDs to ban people from any venue with the system installed and records demographic, gender and age information].

I walked into the building which is just a set of high railway arches. It has that dank, squat smell that makes my heart race with excitement. I walked down a row that felt like a street. To my left and right, as I went, I saw rooms and art installations. Lights shone bright in my eyes and dust clouded my view. There were little huddles of people everywhere. I kept going and going until I came to a big area with a bar and some tables and the livecoding stage.

I was most reminded of an Aspire event I went to one winter a couple of years ago. It had the same feeling of a huge building with lots of different things going on at once. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone somewhere in London that has given me the feeling of being in a secret, wonderful world.

I watched the livecoding for a while. Most of it sounds like random beats and beeps with washes of noise, but some order does emerge.

It got very enthusiastic applause. There was such a strange mix of geeks and hipsters. It was very cool.

Presently, Lightening, a chap I met randomly at a hack weekend a while ago, touched me on the arm and said hello. We spent the rest of the evening palling around together. We found this exhibit where an image of something like iron filings was projected onto a white brick wall and movements in front of it moved the filings around like you were swooshing through water. We went into a dark room where you could only see a white screen with the silhouettes of people on the other side projected onto the San Francisco skyline by a bright light. It felt strangely intimate to see them move and talk and laugh and put their arms around each other when they didn’t know you were there.

Lightening and I talked about his impending move to Berlin, geeky projects we’re working on, the art installations and livecoding. He leaves in a week and nodded when I suggested he DM me on Twitter if he wants to meet up before he goes.