Renting a Space
Tell Me Where It's All Decided
Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist. This is my 164th weekly email.
This week’s topics:
The Fitch
Cabaret Voltaire - “Do Right” (live)
The Fitch
As of November 1st, I’m renting a space at The Fitch Building, 304 15th St, in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. There’s around 30 artists and creatives in the building.
The space is a little over 200 sq ft. I’m sharing it with another artist. I’ll show more pictures once we add some art and rugs and things.
Oyoram (Yorame Mevorach) is the artist behind the LED wall installation on the north side of the building.
His work, titled TimePiece, is a dynamic display featuring a clockface with 162 LED panels that animates hourly by revealing and concealing the time via a digital mechanical arm.
Open House is Saturday, November 8th from 6pm to 9pm. I plan to be there.
Cabaret Voltaire - “Do Right” (live)
Cabaret Voltaire reforming and touring after Richard H. Kirk’s death was not on my radar.
This band was a huge inspiration to me in the 80s, especially their more commercial electronic recordings. I had their “Gasoline In Your Eye” video compilation on VHS back in the day. Chris Watson leaving the band and making field recordings throughout his career was also something I paid attention to over the years. And one of my favorite guitarists, Bill Nelson, guested on their 1987 album “Code”.
After “Code”, I lost interest in them. They wanted to make house music, which seemed like a dumb move. A lot of other people were making house music. They stopped leading and started following, and then they disappeared.
Sure, everything’s mostly on computer these days, but it was back then, too. Stephen Mallinder’s voice is still good at age 70. Chris Watson, at 72, fiddling with some knobs and switches, looking like your grandfather messing about. This proves that you’re not too old to be industrial.