The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs, written by Andrew Brebner, Simon Fogiel and John Hardie.
J Fergus Lamont, arts critic and author of Anti-Growth Coalition: Liz Truss’s Imaginary Enemies or Underrated Nineties Indie Band?
You find me giddy with excitement at the latest example of artistic excellence unveiled in the cultural mecca which is Aberdeen.
You will not have heard of them, for they have had little or no publicity, but the set of dystopian images recently exhibited by celebrated art pranksters “Aberdeen City Council” may be the most chilling sequence of illustrations I have ever seen, and I include in that DC Thomson’s harrowing evocation of urban deprivation, “Oor Wullie”.
Revealing the latest in their perpetual series “Transformative Plans for the City Centre”, they have – instead of taking the easy path of presenting a vision of a future vibrant and optimistic – bravely commissioned an astonishing vision of an unsettling future from the little-known artist, Concept Images.
Images is clearly a Spanish born artist; note both the clear influence of Antoni Gaudí, and the fact that, in their work, Aberdeen always manages to look like Barcelona.
Images is to be applauded for their continuing disregard for such prosaic real world concepts as bins, rain and seagulls. As was previously demonstrated by the “Triple Kirks” and “Marischal Square” developments, this enthusiastic embracing of Gainsborough’s concept of the imaginary landscape challenges the observer to gaze upon the designs, and to attempt to envisage how far the final reality will diverge from the vision.
The familiar city streets are rendered just accurately enough to be recognisable, but, like the special effects in The Polar Express which manage to make Tom Hanks look terrifying, everything is slightly off, creating more questions that answers.
The streets are eerily depopulated – what fate has befallen us, one wonders? Where are the gaggles of wee wifies blocking the newly expanded pavements by walking at three miles an hour?
Is this the result of our growing climate crisis?
What has become of the swarms of school kids in the doorway of the Co-op? Whither the brightly-liveried Deliveroo and Just Eat mannies, hanging out near the Music Hall or St Nicholas kirkyard like the street gangs of Bernstein’s West Side Story, only on mopeds?
The sun which lights the city streets does so with sufficient intensity to bleach every building to a shade of creamy beige, and burn away all the trees growing out of the rooftops – is this the result of our growing climate crisis?
Like Edward Hopper, Images has created views of the city shot through with a powerful, uncanny melancholy, such as the frontage of the New New Market – the one which will be built to replace the one which was so recently demolished, itself built to replace the first one, which was also demolished; like a Russian doll of increasingly disappointing retail experiences.
A fitting depiction of an uncertain future. Baffling, incongruous, like a giant halo light hanging unaided in a mysterious purple sky.
The only conclusion to be drawn is that some calamity has befallen the city; but was it natural, or of our own making? The thought, like acid, eats away as one examines the remaining images – is all of this my fault?
I wept.
Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who goes in hard early doors
I sat down to watch the Manchester derby match last weekend and got a right surprise when I seen it was City v United. I thought one of them was sticking Derby County!
Maybe the Rams would have put up a better fight, because Man U got absolutely hoovered by the Sky Blues, with another hat-stand for the big lad, Ellon Tarland.
Man United fans is having mixed fortunes under new gaffer, Erik ten Haagen-Dazs, and the glory days under Fergie must seem like a lifetime ago. Dons fans know the feeling.
I was gutted to hear that the Eubank v Benn boxing match is no longer not going ahead this weekend. It was bad enough when I learnt it wasn’t 1990s boxing legends Chris and Nigel who was dooking it out, but their receptive sons, Chris Junior and Conor, who is also both boxers as well, co-independently.
The fight is off because one of them had traces of a fertility drug in their piddle, which fairly spoiled my plans. I’ve got Dunter Duncan, Basher Greg and even Killer Christie coming round for boxing, pizza and beers.
I says to my Melody, I says: “What are we going to watch now the boxing’s off?” and she says to me, she says: “Don’t worry Kenny – you can still see folk who used to be famous dancing around each other and getting sweaty on Saturday night.”
So that’s how the lads are now coming round to mine’s to watch Strictly.
Conversation