Then I lost touch with them because I had to go back to the army and I deserted again and I got caught stealing a truck load of metal and I got sent to borstal and from borstal I went back to the army and then I was arrested for stealing a car. I was on a licence from borstal and after I done my prison sentence they revoked my licence from borstal and I done a further eleven months.
From an interview with the Kray's driver Billy Frost, here at the site Spitalfields Life.
This, from another interview at the same site here, this one with Lenny Hamilton, who for reasons that might be evident is rather less-well disposed towards the Krays.
Two geezers grabbed hold of me and then I saw it. I thought they were pokers but there were steels that are used to sharpen knives, Ronnie had them on the gas and they were white-hot. They had wooden handles and the first one Ronnie picked up he dropped because it was so hot, so he went and got an oven glove. Then he picked one up and came over to me, to frighten me, I imagined. He singed my black curly hair. I pissed myself. I was terrified. Next he started setting fire to my suit that I only had made two weeks before.
The most substantial blog round-up I've seen of last weeks The Story event is here with some nice analysis, plus (as a small unexpected bonus) it has a sketch of me - i think maybe the third time I've been sketched in my whole life. This writeup also seemed worth noting cos it reads Starfucker (which I read at the event) as something more than a stream of obscenities.
Still in vaguely on Starfucker - one of the people I was talking to at The Story recommended a site called Roy Orbison in Cling Film. Don't worry. It's just a collection of stories like this one, tho apparently there's a novel out there somewhere which I'm going to track down. (OK, I did, it's easy - at Amazon, here). The author (a quite possibly fictitious Ulrich Haarburste) puts it well I think - "Not to speak boastfully but this is perhaps the only book you will ever need to own on the subject of wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm." I'm going to get a few copies since I know it will go down well at Christmas.
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Video of me here on Art Review website as part of their series called Close Encounters: On Performance, recorded the other week at Gasworks just after the opening and with me discussing all and sundry connections between performance work, visual art, writing etc. Can't really bring myself to watch it but people tell me it's looking good.
I'm doing a talk with Ant Hampton at Gasworks next week alongside my solo show which is running there. The talk event is Wednesday 3rd March 2010. 7-8.30pm. Brochure says:
Artist and writer Tim Etchells and performer and writer Ant Hampton discuss delegation and collaboration across different fields of practice. The two practitioners will reflect on how the act of relinquishing control over the final outcome is embedded in their work and on their relationship to improvisation and incompleteness.
Ant and I organised the virtual programme of live-art for the ICA, True Riches last year after director Ekow Eshun announced the closure of the Live Art department there. If things continue to head downhill at ICA as rapidly as they seem to be doing - see here for example - we may yet have to organise a virtual program for the entire building.
Currently Ant and I are collaborating on a small project which takes off from Ant's 'autoteatro' production Etiquette. The new work - for two audience members/performers - is specifically designed to be presented in libraries and we had a very rapid-fire, playful and largely whispered meeting and try-out of some ideas in London last week at the British Library.
Meanwhile another of Ants 'autoteatro' projects GuruGuru - his collaboration with Joji Koyama and Sam Britton (aka Isambard Khroustaliov) - plays London from March 4 - 28 in an unusual space below Camden People's Theatre, just north of Tottenham Court Road (other side of Euston Rd). Full info on the project (which looks great) here, booking info etc here.
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Also next week in London is one night of Kate McIntosh's All Natural. Her first project (there are three more so far already) All Natural starts with "a showgirl who seems to have emerged from a month lost in the forest - muddy, messy, and more animal than human". It's a fascinating piece and I'm sad that I can't be there to see it again. Regular readers here will have come across Kate in fragments and quotes here and there in the notebook over the last couple of years. I contributed text to a later project of Kate's (called Loose Promise) and since then was involved in her most recent performance Dark Matter, advising/mentoring (not sure about that word!), throwing in some text and asking useful (and useless) questions here and there. In some kind of complicated about-face Kate is now advising me.. helping us to shape the movement material in Forced Entertainment's new work The Thrill of it All. All Natural is at 7:45pm, Thursday 4 March at the Purcell Room / Southbank Centre, London. Booking info here. Try to catch it if you can.
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