blogspot

1. www.crox-box.blogspot.com
ship’s journal
The crox-blog takes off after a remark by Thomas Bogaert. He reminds van of the
texts he wrote about the first edition of the brainbox project and brings up the
idea to write about other crox activities in the same way. van doesn’t kick the
idea around till it gets lost and starts the crox-blog at the very same day,
April 19th, 2009.

2. www.hildevancanneyt.blogspot.com
interviews with artists, a regular /as from November 2008/

3. The journal of the brainbox project. Two editions. To be found at the top of the links page.  

4. Remember To Forget The Congo, the project by Adam Geczy (AU), May 2010. Contributions by
Marc Coene, van and Adam Geczy. See Timetable.

the crox-box /a summary manual/

donderdag 5 augustus 2010
Crox-encyclopedia. Translation SVR. Van Ryssen translates the encyclopedia into English. Is used to doing the reverse. Specialist. Recently still a tome of 700 pagezzz. Turned the whole thing inside out. A laundry bag full of brown crossings. Fother for nerds and folk buzzing in front of a display. The other way round for the encyclopedia, literally, the text is supposed to fit in an idiom and a grammatical context foreign to his mother tongue. His father’s neither. He even deals with poetry. Then the little grey cells turn even more
grey.
van started writing the encyclopedia in the Summer of the year 2004.
CarianaCarianne said she thought it was a great idea, Captain Coene provided the structure. The Urtext has some fragments in the English idiom and shreds where van combines both languages. Ergo, another task, apart from translating the main part into English, rendering the English pieces in nice Dutch. A few examples: green, crox-poem, train, America, Verwée. Neither is van idle.
Updating the Urtext. The tranfer of the encyclopedia from the old to the new structure, which happened in one go, an artful intervention by Luc Pieters, caused quite some gaps. Stuccowork. An encyclopedia of this kind is never really complete. The Brittanica, to name but one, lacks Capello, a Venetian admiral, fifteenth or sixteenth century, immortalised by Titian, stunning, a gorgeous portrait. He is not in the Brittanica. They do know about a lady though, same epoch, similar
name, who poisoned her lover. There you go. When Capello was the head of the fleet, the Venetians lost all their games. Back and forth, already then it was that way. Capello didn’t know about the Brittanica, it didn’t yet exist, that makes quite a difference. Imagine realising, as an admiral, in your latter days: I won’t be in the Brittanica. Don’t worry, Capello, neither are we. And talking about battles. Poisoners though. The watering hole of insects, maggots, wormiforms, corpses, excrement. Why were you there, Capello. Look, listen, listen Capello,
Capello, listen, I’ve got an idea. /see Capello/

Friday, 30 July 2010
Three pages about a murder. In glaring letters at the front page: DE MORGEN MOTHER KILLED EIGHT OF HER TEN CHILDREN. As yet nothing much about the motive.

Sjoerd and Gwen consider cancelling the subscription. What De Morgen does day in day out, what they chuck at the front page, over and over again, the disasters and tragedies they can’t stop drooling about, the page long crap about a disaster in Duisburg, and now this, the coprophagic sentiment of a bunch of ciphers scratching themselves like scruffy dogs who in The State of Affairs meanwhile have risen to the status of a self-eating turd.  

There is nothing else to say about the art and culture pages of De Morgen. Nothing meaningful can be said about them. The death of Willem Breuker (1944-2010), last weekend at the front page of  de Volkskrant [daily newspaper from the Netherlands], was missed. They had, if I’m not mistaken, an exclusive interview with Tom Jones. The word exclusive here is an expletive, mister Tom Jones does exclusive interviews all the time, the interviews of and with Tom Jones are about as exclusive as the mush from a dog’s arse.

Why did they interrogate the neighbours of the lady who killed eight kids? What is their business in the hole in Northern France. Let them stay out of there. It saves on petrol. The  paperazzi of the bathetic, it evaporates even before you could have read the words.  ‘Perfectly ordinary mother' it says, I read. That’s how they start this kind of writing:  ‘Forever the village of the children’s bodies.’ This kind of gutter journalism should be forbidden under penal law. Sensation with the depth of half a centimeter, nothing more. Just as often they don’t even know what they are writing about. On Monday they announce a newly discovered Rubens, on Tuesday it is not by Rubens. A piece on Fabre, one more stiff, easily goes down with the rest, the scum is paying, that makes a difference.  The thin ice of commonly known things, slippery without advancing 1 single centimeter. Clear away the garbage.

What they are good at, surprisingly, are green issues. The weird thing about De Morgen, muck is running down your spine, one or other semi-literary sect already is making plans to start your reanimation, and suddenly, just like that, even if you hadn’t asked for it, you read a piece on plankton. Plankton dissappears quickly, it says. They could as well have put that on the front page: plankton disappears. A mother and eight children’s bodies, it fades into nothingness. /see De Morgen/

Thursday, 8 July 2010
Ornette Coleman at Gent Jazz, a quartet with Al Mac Dowell, Tony Falanga and Denardo Coleman.

Some radio channel had it that the concert was sold out. Petty, petty, childish exaggeration, the show isn’t even half full. We are up to the apple tree.

The set starts with a statement of Ornette on sax, his white and infamous vehicle of half a nickel. Ten seconds. After the short intro he alternates on trumpet and sax. Tony Falanga opens the second number, unplugged double bass with bow. It’s a slow motion track. Ornette is especially active. While in Brussels, bozar 2008 - note from the author - a person sitting next to me remarks, he left more to the band. Precisely. There is also 1 bass less than during that famous Middelheim
concert of the previous year. The third number is swinging up-tempo. Ornette turns to viola. It’s punk jazz, it’s virtuoso, it’s fantastic. And what strikes most this time: Coleman is exploring new territory.

Track 4 starts with Falanga and Mac Dowell in duo, with Denardo rolling over them with a ruffle after closing time. The slow tempo has a dark and erotic aura. The drama, tempered, the beautiful chants, pathos, exquisite, the roaring, the lamentations, moaning, the complications.

Track 5 is breathtaking: a multirhythmic confusion, streamlined confusion, a confusion of, what did I write, now, here, hardly to be unravelled, of extremes a confusion, beginning and end, up and downside, inside and out, everything reversed in a maelstrom of
atmospheres. Sounds crossing through one another and taking half of a passenger with them, at times the upper, at times the lower, sometimes the back, sometimes the inside halves, all together halting at the same platform where all the sounds get on and off simultaneously. I don’t know if this even comes close to what I had wanted to say.  

6 starts with a pizzicato by Falanga, 7 is a cello suite by Bach. In Middelheim, three years ago, the audience roared, Denardo banged the bass drum, the meadow applauded. Now there is no laughter. And so much more beautiful it is this time, without the laughter, the dark and slow melo of the bass and the sound of the horn.

Next comes a clear and exciting bossa nova rhythm. Someone sitting next to me points out the shadow of Denardo’s hand at the bottom of the canopy. The shadow of hand and stick gigantically enlarged and hovering right above the audience.

What follows, extasy, first a blues, then a heavy swing, and another number, Falanga on bow and over and over again, in every detail, in every part, in every element, Coleman combining all the ingedients. Ornette Coleman, the starting point, the apotheosis. An uppercut. The audience is elated and shagged out.

Friday, 4 June 2010 (a) what’s in the notebook, (b) the published version

(a) Full house. Kristof on overtoneflute. N-P percussion. Y with bow on a chinese tablestringinstrument. Istanbul to the left. Taiwan wildcoast to the right. Istanbul: a dredger. The Game. N-P on gong. Paddies, lets call it paddies. To the right: folks making fire. Anna, Olaf, Emily. In the game the lady fetches green balls. N-P dances slow motion crescendo plural. Yvan on overtoneflute. N-P redresses, robe with red hipbelt. Sings. Istanbul, palm trees, Taiwan. Projection The Game on her face striding in a long dress what she shouts/sings Chinese. N-P a.t. Chinese string instrument. Fingerpicking, bow, dancing with bow. Taiwan shrub to the right. Taiwan agriculture to the left. Inventory. The Game: the balls behave like moons planets. N-P red dress and black tights like long ears hopping, jumps. In The Game the figure enters a tunnel. Wouter Cox, Stefaan Smagghe. N-P stuck against the wall. A humming sound, a dinosaurian bumblebee. The Bosporus to the left. Plumes of smoke. Folks make a fire. N-P strings. She stands on a chair. Intensification. Rough sounds. Dissonants. The balls shoot this way and that with phosphorescent shadows. A small beach. The character is at a beach.  FIN. The applause a warm applause. Celestes asks ‘Why are you a girl?’ Because that is what I am. Because that is how I feel. Frans Gentils drops in, also. 'Are those your braces?' No, it’s a top. A daddy longlegs. Emily, Celestes and Eran. Reverb: the life of a tone.

(b) Full house. Kristof on overtoneflute, Nan-Ping percussion, Yvan chases a bow over the strings of a peculiar tablestringinstrument. Nan-Ping had explained what kind of instrument it was. Not the slightest idea. To the left a panoramic retrospective of Istanbul, to the right a flaming travel along the eastern coast of Taiwan. The game. Nan-Ping ruffles on a gong. At the back of the paddy is a tower.