Ah- pain, woe, the universe! Life, desire, memory, art, grief, sniff! How to invoke these last few weeks- except as a painful threnody, a mournful bewailing of the eternal theme of the futility of earthly aspirations, unrelentingly flailing and harrowing, like an acidulous scourge, tawse, or thong our too frail, too humanly, flimsily flaccid sensibilities; stripping all mirth from everyday intercourse and slicing with the merciless chilliness of an Eskimo's icy gryykjzxp (*hunting implement) to the soul's quick, to expose once and for all the existential lie that is laughter, the fraud that is fun, the treason that is tittering? Eh? First the totally unexpected demise of the beloved Queen Mummy. Then- worse!- the mangling of Beckham's pedal extremity. Then- more terrible yet!- that good-looking if girly chap in the Forsyte Saga falls foul of the wheels of a horse and cart. Dreadful. Therefore, go ye and titter no more, saith ArtRumour, and here are some Very Sorry Things not to titter about.

Sadness in Sydney

The May opening of the Sydney Biennale may be delayed by two whole weeks, it's rumoured, due to the attempted importation of Highly Contagious Items by 2002 Turner Prize shortlistee and general wild-man-of-the-woods Mike Nelson. Stories suggest that Australian customs, having discovered three matches, some toenail clippings and an unfumigated wooden leg in Nelson's toolkit, have placed the entire Biennale in quarantine to avoid a gigantic Antipodean outbreak of Mad Cow disease, which the Aussie authorities apparently believe has reached pandemic proportions in the UK. What with that and foot-and-mouth, it'll be a miracle if the Biennale's British artist contingent is let in at all, especially given the length of Nelson's hair. Put 'em all in the army, says ArtRumour tearfully.

Tyne Tragedy

Further bad news up North- it's heartache in Hartburn, triste in Trimdon, and numbness in Nobblesthwaite (yes, we made that last one up) as the Baltic allegedly splurges sums big enough to make grown men weep on the installation of Chris Burden's Meccano Tyne Bridge. Contrary to popular belief, Meccano does not take to pieces: Burden's model divides into just two sections, neither of which, it seems, will fit the Baltic's lift. Shoehorning the piece into the centre will apparently involve demolishing then repairing whole sections of the building (presently being completed a year behind schedule). Pricey? Just a tad: figures of £200K are being bandied about- plus Burden retains ownership of the work. Some have wondered if it wouldn't be quicker and cheaper to dismantle the real thing and show that instead, though this would obviously be sad (and inconvenient) for people wishing to travel from one side of the Tyne to the other in the normal manner. ArtRumour has carefully considered airing additional info about alleged serious conflicts of interest lurking at the very heart of the Baltic management... did anyone mention property developing in the vicinity of the Centre?- but NO!!! Urgh!!! Gasp!!! Sob!!! It's all too much- we can't go on!

Art Schools: Sortez Vos Mouchoirs

In compliance with governmental plans to purge higher education from the face of the land, Wimbledon Art School principal and etymological soundalike Rod Bugg is allegedly considering sacking everyone in the place starting from the top down. Stories are rife that eight Heads of Dept. and four other Higher Beings have been told both to clear their desks and rewrite their own job descriptions, using their powers of telepathy to divine what staff (if any) will remain for their successors (if any) to line-manage. A sorry state of affairs to be sure, but no surprise to veterans of the Rodd Bugg Experience of ten-odd years ago at Central St. Martin's. Meanwhile, up north down Archway way, a David-and-Goliath situation is shaping up as the Byam Shaw School of Art resists being mincemeated by the combined forces of London Guildhall University and the University of North London, Byam Shaw's partner institution. LGU and UNL's planned merger will apparently create an easily manageable, intimately-scaled university offering quality tuition to some 45 trillion students. Given reports that the teeny-weeny Byam Shaw fundraised more money last year than the whole of UNL put together, plus the fact that not so long ago LGU was the first of the new universities to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, this seems to be a case of throttling the goose that lays the golden eggs. Deep sigh.

Curator's Regress

But what is this? A chink, a faint beam of light in the darkness? Radiating, moreover, from the Royal College? Why yes! "FAIR", in which the RCA's MA curators invited another bunch of curators, gallerists etc. to come and do their curating for them. Keen-eyed observers reported a sum total of nearly 70 curators at work on the one show- a clear breach of EU regulations, but nevertheless the exercise has inadvertently opened up a whole new area of potential academic operation. In the near future, expect to see courses training curators to curate curators to curate curators to curate curators to curate curators (etc) blossoming soon at an art school near you, and warming the hearts of any nearby fans of Blairite management culture. (And if a good half of the RCA's curators (allegedly) bugger off abroad, after their (oops- alleged) £70K ACE-subsidised London schmooze, so what? Answers on a postcard from Liechtenstein, please.)

Performance Anxiety

If the Whitechapel's "Short History of Performance" is anything to go by, the best way to recover from the trauma of recreating famous performances of yesteryear is to down a few small ales. Bruce McLean chugged his way steadily through bottled beer in his post-performance interview, stoically resisting the temptation to explain himself in any detail; likewise, after the reconstruction of1964 epic Meat Joy, Carolee "'Interior Scroll" Schneemann seemed a little the worse for wear, sliding off her seat during the post-show chat and ending up on the floor- maybe a preliminary sketch for an original new piece, "Interior Plonk". Self-confessed cat-snogger Schneemann resurfaced a day later sporting a pair of furry ears on a plastic headband. Ah, bless! says Artrumour- better a cheerfully pissed performance artist any day, than power-drunk, sexist, crypto-fascist garden gnomes like Hermann Nitsch waggling around boring people's pants off with a load of tired old ritual crap. And we mean that most sincerely, folks.

Reviewers' Droop

So- still haven't managed to lay your hands on a copy of100 Reviews (3), the recently-published random-fire reviews marathon from the pens of Liam Gillick, JJ Charlesworth, Patricia Bickers and 1997 Hairdresser of the Year Matthew Collings? There, there, Cinders, dry your tears. Here are ArtRumour's new "Artists's Pages" giving a general idea of the contents:

No. 77. Blasted Oaks in the European Imagination. A show about (inhale, go up a few tones, sound quizzical) blasted oaks in the European imagination. Oaks are trees, with (inhale) greeny-brown leaves with nice wiggly edges and well-turned blobby seeds sitting in their own little cups, just like eggs. When blasted they can look quite attractive in a wispy (inhale, pause), blasted sort of way. The paintings are in various sizes with differently-coloured (inhale), frame-y sort of frames, and they reminded me of my last holiday on Dennis Hopper's ranch. Last time I saw Dennis he asked me what I was doing, and I replied "Oh just going around galleries looking at pictures with (inhale) square shapes and (pause) nicely handpainted blobs of colour". Sending invoices for sums with lots of noughts on the end to publishers, it always makes me laugh. (MC)

No. 99: Tits Out For the Lads: 1970s Full-Colour Porn Photography. Is this exhibition exposing any productive discussion points? The mediations between cultural kleptomania and a problematic tradition of low content restyling sit uncomfortably with what might be possible across and around an updated version of willed inarticulacy (-testing by default the interstitial involutions of self-referenciality, a vile neologism which I prefer to spell with a c) though this may merely be a correspondence with partially imploded semi-modernist models of discourse translated via neo-liberal critiques of lateral exchange. We will probably never know with any precision, but the woman with the striped socks reminded me of someone whose name I can't remember. (LG)

So now you know.