THE LONG NIGHT OF THE BIENNIAL BY TRACEY DUNN

Thursday 30th October was the night that many Biennial exhibitions stayed open until 11pm and many venues put on special events to celebrate this.

I visited TATE Liverpool to see a performance piece by Wolfgang Flur who was the 'drummer' for Kraftwerk when they were at their peak in the late 70's and 80's.The first album I received (from my father) was Kraftwerk's Autobahn so I was especially keen to go.Wolfgang designed a lot of Kraftwerk's electronic instruments and consoles.A real talented tech-head.

He talked from his book 'I was a teenage robot' for over an hour and then showed some film with his latest music on.There was a prize of a signed remixed version for anyone who could name a particular insrument Kraftwerk used somewhere.Answer was a mellotron ...no one knew so the question became 'what was the first instrument Wolfgang ever played?' I said the flute but it was the mouth organ.I had hoped that because I was the only person there who had read his book I would win the remix !! I didn't.

We then visited the Red Wire Gallery's basement in Castle Street for Daniel Johnson's songs performed by local musicians.Daniel Johnson is a very talented American artist and musician who suffers quite severely with mental health problems ( inc. bi-polar) but has been an inspiration to Spiritualized,Beck and the late Kurt Cobain from Nirvana.In fact Kurt wore a Daniel Johnson T shirt frequently which I think introduced Daniel to a wider audience.

I also visited Daniel Johnson's exhibition of cartoons a few days later on its last day.It seems Daniel has a real struggle with good and evil.He is constantly trying to defeat the' demons' that swamp him from time to time.The art is about how we are born innocent and can slowly become corrupted in life and lose that innocence.Some symbols used are toddler's building blocks and winged eyeballs.The more eye's a character has the more corrupt it is in Daniel Johnson's world.