Stop running
Henrietta Bredin 11:11pm
Running is not a part of my repertoire - nobody with a bosom of even a sliver above the average size would dream of subjecting it to such horrendously jolting treatment - and I am disposed to be suspicious of anyone over the age of 12 who considers it a good way of getting around except in a case of dire emergency. I am therefore a touch dubious about Martin Creed's new work at Tate Britain, which involves runners sprinting through the Duveen Galleries - where such an activity is usually and thankfully prohibited - at 30-second intervals. All the same, it does sound slightly more sane than the activities planned in North Norfolk next weekend. More people than seems reasonable are embarking on a hideous pile-up of sporting endurance. Starting with a crack-of-dawn one-mile swim in a choppy, freezing, jellyfish-laden North Sea, competitors then clamber into kayaks and paddle like fury against the tide, disembark and go for a 38-mile bike ride (yes, I did say 38 miles, presumably such a preposterously long distance just to get the competitors out of the way while everyone else goes back to bed or settles down to a good breakfast), before topping off the whole ludicrously agonizing enterprise with a 7-mile run.
I would like to direct the attention of those involved in this, or any similar event, to Richard Ford's acutely observed The Lay of the Land, the third in his trilogy of novels after The Sportswriter and Independence Day, in which he describes the participants in a Thanksgiving Day marathon:
Stop it now. This way madness lies.'The runners – string-thin men and identical females in weightless shorts, expensive-as-hell running shoes, numbered racing bibs and plastic water bottles – are dedicatedly goading themselves into road-race mentality, stretching and twisting, prancing and bending and ignoring one another, hands on hips, heads down, occasionally erupting into violent bursts of in-place jogging to fire their muscles into exertion mode. [...] Most are in middle years, all obviously scared silly of serenity and death, a fixation that makes them emaciate themselves, punish their bones and brains (many of the women quit menstruating or having the slightest interest in sex) and cut themselves off from friend, foe and family’.
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Comments
Frank Pulley
July 1st, 2008 1:15am"many of the women quit menustrating"
Seems they heeded your caption already!
Frank Pulley
July 1st, 2008 1:18amsri "menstruating" (sp).
'Only women bleed' and only a man couldn't spell it properly.
FOH
July 1st, 2008 8:04amThis is art? What a joke. I can't stand this sort of nonsense.
Chuck Unsworth
July 1st, 2008 8:15amYes, if God had meant us to walk he would not have given us wheels.
But these days 'Tate Britain' certainly gives me the runs.
Water
July 1st, 2008 9:15amFOH I find myself saying the same thing about education and so on under labour.
cuffleyburgers
July 1st, 2008 9:21amSurely running increased your sex drive...it does mine
Don't know much about menstruating though
Nicholas
July 1st, 2008 9:21amChannel 4 News interviewed the "artist" and it was apparent that this is just a monumental piss take perpetrated on those gullible luvvies.
Tate says of him:
"He creates arresting artworks that often disrupt the norm and are characterised by a playful humour and a minimalist approach to his materials. One of Creed’s most famous pieces is Work No.227: The lights going on and off, shown at Tate Britain in 2001, the year he won the Turner Prize."
My own next interactive piece is taking the dog for a walk on a different route. If anyone wishes to view it entry is free.
Lance Diatessaron
July 1st, 2008 9:43amNicholas: Free entry? You'll never cut it as An Artist.
Max Kaye
July 1st, 2008 10:37amThe Spectator should be careful when it comes to ridiculing 'modern art'. After all, it presumably paid its arts writer, Andrew Lambirth, good money to pen pretentious bollocks about the Cy Twombly' scribbles in this week's edition.
(Unless, of course, Lambirth was testing us all in an 'Emperor's New Clothes' way and waiting to see whether anyone would stand up and say anything...).
Rex Burr
July 1st, 2008 12:14pmTate Modern is always worth a visit, to get out of the rain or have a meal.
Kevyn Bodman
July 1st, 2008 12:24pmRunning is fun.
There is pleasure to be had in movemnent and exertion.
Racing can be fun; it can be very satisfying to go absolutely as fast as you can regardless of finishing time or position.
But it is not art.
And claims that it is art should not be entertained.
Nicholas
July 1st, 2008 12:36pmLance: I did think about charging but the Tate installation is free and so far the only taker to my own "installation" is the local council surveillance team filming my dog's counter-revolutionary defecation activities from deep cover. I could go over and ask them for five quid but don't want them to feel embarrassed about their atrocious field craft and lack of camouflage expertise. It's mainly the fluorescent jackets with "Dog Warden" on them that give them away - and the fact that they need four able-bodied adults to operate one video camera, two balaclava-clad police officers and four community support goons to protect them from the dog-walking insurgent cells infesting the de-defecation zone.
Hang on a mo' - maybe they are just another Tate Modern "installation" representing the dynamic interaction of local authority radical reaction to the subversive chaos of canine anarchists?
kate
July 1st, 2008 1:28pm"nobody with a bosom of even a sliver above the average size would dream of subjecting it to such horrendously jolting treatment"
Buy a sports bra, love. And try to wipe the sneer off your face.
Verity
July 1st, 2008 3:35pmRunners are revolting. Even their legs are horrible. Gnarled with compacted muscles. And they look like prats in their sweat bands. And,like cyclists, they expect others to urgently make way for their self-important passage.
Twerps.
Lance Diatessaron
July 1st, 2008 4:04pmNicholas: I bet they'd love the chance to add some meaning to their lives. Plus they'd probably be eligible for a prize or a grant, if they put a smiley face on their council badge, and called themselves something like 'George Bush's Fundamentalist Fascist Faktory'.
You could even get The Coffee House involved and say it's digital multimedia.
But you'd have to stop being so coy. It's shit, not 'defecation', as any challenging, envelope-pushing, bleeding-edge artosser knows.
(I bet that gets censored by those squares.)
Gym Guy
July 1st, 2008 4:09pmVerity: I run, but I quite like it when walkers don't let me pass, as it gives me a breather.
And Henrietta should have a word with some of the ladies trotting in Hyde Park of an evening. There must be a Big T*ts Running Club in South Kensington. Its hypnotic, frankly, but I fear for their backs, and their husbands.
Frank Pulley
July 2nd, 2008 1:25amcuffleyburgers
>"Surely running increased your sex drive...it does mine
Don't know much about menstruating though"<
Pass on my sympathy to whoever has to launder your bedsheets.