Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • Hallyu, Mociology & Microchunk

    Hallyu – The rise of Korea as a cultural hotbed (what’s called the Korean wave in some quarters) in Asia: from the sexiest mobile phones, or well written and produced cinema to K-pop (the Korean equivalent of J-pop: sugar-coated Japanese pop music that carries well in other Asian markets and performed by young performers so physically perfect, you wonder if Sony hasn’t a secret laboratory protected by ninjas inside of Mount Fuji to manufacture J-pop artists).
    Interestingly the Korean wave has not yet impacted on Japan in the same way as its neighbours, which was an interesting aside that came out of Richard Edelman’s keynote at the London presentation of his agency’s global trust barometer survey. Kudos to the New York Times Online (registration required).
    Expect to see more of hallyu: the mix of professional product perfection and the conservative nature of Korean culture produces a product that travels better around the world than much US culture.

    Mociology – The study of how mobile technology impacts with sociology from purchasing concert tickets to organising political rallies, raves and flash mobs. (Derived from mobile and sociology).

    Microchunk – A product or service sold traditionally as a package broken down into its constituent parts so buyers can purchase a la carte for consumer electronics to news feeds. Think sachet marketing for the digital world. People like 37signals have successfully built ‘microchunk’ applications and services (like Backpack) that do one thing extremely well and compete against other much larger software companies that take a bundled approach leveraging an effective desktop monopoly (mentioning no names). Kudos for mociology and microchunk to Wired Magazine. More related content here. 

  • Chinese eyes on Korea

    From romantic Korean drams to hard boiled films like Old Boy and Silmido are making waves amongst arthouse cinema fans and movie industry talent-spotters throughout the western world. It now seems that its not only Hollywood that is turning its eyes eastwards to follow the latest cultural carrying-ons in Korea, but Chinese eyes are too.

    The New York Times China’s Youth Look to Seoul for Inspiration by Norimitsu Onishi (January 2, 2006) has an interesting article on how young Chinese eyes Korea as tastemakers in fashion, beauty and  popular culture.

    The country’s cultural exports are cutting-edge tempered with the Confucian-based culture familiar to Chinese audiences. American culture is too ‘post-modern’ to be absorbed directly. At least some of the time, China sees Japan in a way reminiscent of Basil Fawlty and  is still beyond the pale because of the War. Although the Chinese consistent appetite for Japanese AV content is well documented elsewhere. Taste making goes beyond pop singers and movies to hip brands such the must-have mobile phone from Samsung and Hyundai cars.

    Rather like Eric Clapton adapting the blues for white audiences in the UK; so Korea is adapting western idioms from hip-hop culture and sit-coms like Sex in the City. It is then making them palatable for East Asian audiences. Free trade and intellectual property protection is likely to not be as beneficial to Hollywood in tapping the Chinese market as the media moguls had hoped. More Korea related posts here.

  • Renaissance

    Platform Art and Renaissance

    At Gloucester Road there is a series of self portraits by a photographer who has desguised himself in each picture. It is part of London Underground’s Platform Art series.

    I boought the tenth anniversary reissue of the original Renaissance mix album by Sasha and John Digweed. Renaissance is hailed by many clubbers as being revolutionary. I thought I would comment on some of the innovations:

    – Renaissance was the birth of progressive house: no it wasn’t you can hear a natural progression between early Renaissance and Sasha’s sets before the club was formed. Renaissance was built on the back of the reputation that Sasha had earned at Shelly’s in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. Progressive house had been put out for a fair while by artists, most notably the Italian acts Sueno Latino and Last Rhythm. Fabi Paras had championed the sound in London.

    – Renaissance changed the visual language of clubbing: kind of. Renaissance got its name from borrowing fromrenaissance paintings, which were deconstructed and repurposed, however from the early days of house, many club flyers and imagery was borrowed from the cheesier ‘catholic’ religious art.

    – Renaissance was a life changing experience: It depends where your head was at. Renaissance was a good club, they managed to get all the ingredients right: the security, the staff, the clubbers, the venue, the ambience, the music and the DJs. People had a great time, but then in club culture during the early 1990s there was a lot of great times to be had every weekend all over the country.

    – Renaissance revived clubbing: Don’t believe the hype. Renaissance caught the top of the clubbing wave. It was one of a number of clubs that issued in a glitzy waye: straight lads wearning Versace shirts and leather trousers. Another trend to benefit was the mixed gay straight clubs like Vague in Leeds. The reasons why this came about was as much to do with getting a licence as baggy clothes for dancing meant wholesale drug use and possible dealer rumbles. Mincing around the club in clothes you would be afraid to sweat in was supposed to prevent it, it didn’t it just heralded the arrival of wholesale cocaine use. It replaced the egalitarian nature of house and rave with snobbishness.

    My recollections of Renaissance

    It was towards the end of 1992, a friend of mine had got a gig on a Friday night at the Venue 44 in Mansfield playing what would now be termed drum and bass. I knew him as we used to play house sets together. He had met a couple in some ski resort where he had gone to play for a couple of months. The couple were involved in putting club flyers in shops and bars throughout the Midlands and the North of England. When he came back, he got in touch with the couple and they got him the gig.

    I turned up to a half empty night decked out in decorations. After I made some enquiries, I got into Renaissance for free a few weeks later. I remember having a nightmare parking the Austin Metro I had at the time and stiff legs from the two-hour drive that did not welcome the stairs I had to climb to the front door. The building looked anonymous and whitewashed on the outside.

    The main dance floor had the DJ booth well above it and there was a chill out area between the front door and the barn like dance floor with bench seating and some sort of trellices. Most of the lads going there looked like rugby league players and the girls like night wear models. The club had a buzz, but it was not the raw electric feel of Shellys, The Hacienda or the Quadrant Park. More related content here.

  • The Layer Cake by JJ Connolly

    The Layer Cake is a hard bitten crime novel of 90’s underworld London that the movie was based on. However the book is worth reading because the plot is similar but different to the film.

    I won’t go into too much depth because that would spoil it for you, but suffice to say its a great read. The book doesn’t have the slick quality of the film, primarily because it has more depth.

    From the thought that has gone into it, one may wonder as to how J.J. Connolly got his knowledge. Having worked and lived in clubland during the late 1980s and early 1990s the type of characters Connolly describes brought me right back to my early and mid twenties.

    The Layer Cake mixing the world of private military contractors and criminal endeavour reminded me of a former boss who had an address book. The address book was alleged to be full of ‘good lads’ who could solve problems ‘at home or abroad’. He was anything but the action man himself, being obsessed with his Hugo Boss suits at the time. He’d apparently been employed because of his work for a major name in the road construction industry, before I’d worked for him.

    Great fiction like other forms of art has an intrinsic truth hidden inside that otherwise wouldn’t be able to be told.

    Get out and buy the book; watching the film before the book doesn’t affect your enjoyment of it. More book reviews here.

    The Layer Cake

  • The Hacienda must be built

    The Hacienda (or Fac51) was one of the most famous and influential clubs of all time, together with London nights like Shoom, Spectrum and Solaris it catapulted house music (at the time, the sound of black and gay Chicago into worldwide exposure). The Hac influenced and was influenced by the Ibizan scene. Even prior to house, the club innovated; hosting the first UK performance by Madonna in the early 1980s. The club was a work of love by designer Peter Saville, Rob Gretton who managed New Order and Tony Wilson TV newsreader and founder of Factory Records. The name itself came from a passage in arty situationist manifesto by Ivan Chtcheglov that culminated in the passage:

    And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and without geography, no longer setting out for the Haçienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old alamanac. Now that’s finished. You’ll never see the Hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The Hacienda must be built.

    Famous art galleries and authors houses get preserved and saved. However night clubs don’t get this reward: The Cavern where the Beatles played is a car park, The Warehouse in Chicago has disappeared, The Wigan Casino and Twisted Wheel hubs of the northern soul scene have been redeveloped, The Wag Club which hosted new music throughout the 1980s from the new romantics to Bomb the Bass is part of a tacky mock Irish pub chain on the edge of London’s Chinatown.

     The Hacienda was demolished in 1997 and auctioned off piece by piece, the site is now a block of overpriced yuppie apartments.Despite the desecration committed by property developers, its cultural mark still lives on.

    This can be seen in the popular Steve Coogan film 24 Hour Party People, the ‘classics chart’ of Graeme Park hosted at Hard To Find Records online and London event promoters Get Loaded. More related posts here.