Yesterday’s post mentioned in passing an Arts Council project that typifies the standards we’ve come to expect from publicly funded art. Jarvis Cocker, the country’s foremost socialist pop musician, was sent to the Arctic for “inspiration” and to raise planetary consciousness, along with another two dozen artistic luminaries:
The ambition of the expedition was to inspire the creative team to respond to climate change… It was an amazing journey; 10 days of artistic inspiration, debate, discussion and exploration.
The ecological insights gleaned by Mr Cocker?
Men have produced a lot of great art over the centuries, or whatever… but… an iceberg kind of, basically, pisses on it.
Here’s the contribution by Beatboxer Shlomo, who “dedicates his beats to the cause.”
Mr Shlomo’s deep, deep insights into climatology and life can be read here. They include,
I couldn’t help but notice that it’s really quite cold.
And,
Being with all these inspired people seems to have filled my head with a zillion ideas for musical endeavours that could easily save the world.
The expedition organisers explain the artistic riches to be tapped and why the creative excursion is so worth your money:
Through witnessing the environment, taking part in stimulating discussion and observing and participating in scientific field research, we enable our voyagers to gain a real connection to the subject matter. Our ambition is that this experience will inspire all who journey to somehow respond to the Arctic and create work on their return.
Such was the level of inspiration, some of the assembled artists began to work their creative magic immediately.
Tracy Rowledge constructed three series of ‘automated’ physical drawings, mapping the movement of the boat during the expedition.
We must heal the planet with drawings, people. It’s a matter of urgency. For readers of a technical inclination, these ‘automated’ drawings involved suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, resulting in random scribble on numerous sheets of paper positioned underneath. This feat was “REALLY exciting” as it “explored movement, time, place and permanence.” The radical innovation also freed the artist to leave the dangling pen and do something more interesting. According to her two brief blog entries, the sum total of her commentary, Ms Rowledge spent much of this liberated time struggling with Greenlandic place names and making sure her fellow passengers knew how “overwhelmed” she was.
Meanwhile,
David Buckland projected video onto a glacier wall and re-filmed it.
While,
Michèle Noach collected Arctic poppies.
I realise it’s a lot to take in but brace yourselves, there’s more. And I think I’ve saved the best for last.
Francesca Galeazzi performed her CO2 work.
I know, you itch to hear what this “CO2 work” entailed. You want to behold its majesty.
I walked across the fresh snow with a gas cylinder in my arms, containing 6kg of CO2. I took it across the unspoiled snow field of the Jakobshavn Fjord until I found what, to my eyes, was a wonderful place.
You can see what’s coming, can’t you?
I walked to the top of the small hill, I put the cylinder down, got on my knees and opened the valve.
Because great art is challenging and transgressive. See for yourselves:
Ms Galeazzi then reflects on the devastating fallout of being so goddamn edgy.
A few people on board were quite upset by my gesture, they thought it was outrageous. But generally I got lots of support for what was perceived as thought provoking and courageous.
And,
Reading this you might think I am an evil horrible woman.
No, love. We will be fair in our judgement. You’re not evil. That would at least be interesting. You’re merely a talentless poseur and a freeloading narcissist. Not evil, just a bint.
Ms Galeazzi’s other artistic contributions are described in greater, more harrowing detail:
Yesterday for me was a roller-coaster of emotions: determination and failure, hope and fear, anticipation and disappointment. One of my projects on board consisted of an artistic response to the melting and retreat of glaciers as result of climate change. My response was to place a park bench on a newly formed iceberg or floating ice-shelf off the fast-moving coast of West Greenland. A bench which, in its fragility and remoteness, becomes a silent witness of the dramatic changes that are occurring in the Arctic.
A bench with nobody to sit on.
Embrace the profundity. And there’s even more to it than that.
Key to the project, the bench would be tracked in its slow and inexorable pilgrimage through a satellite device that will make it possible to locate it for months to come, through the unfamiliar frozen sea, the ever-changing scenery, the incoming uninterrupted nights. The tracker was a fundamental part of the project, commenting on our contemporary surveillance society.
Two birds, one stone. A bargain.
Tragically, the search for a suitable location for the Great Symbolic Bench proved futile.
The wind was so strong that the mission would have failed immediately, the bench would be blown off the iceberg in no time. Around 8 in the evening we gave up.
Undeterred, our heroine took comfort in a loftier, more conceptual approach.
I started to feel that my project was gaining a different, and maybe stronger, meaning… it was the search that mattered, it was the effort, the determination, the non giving up at the first difficulty. It was the common effort that supported me which made me feel I was doing the right thing. And maybe the bench was an excuse and didn’t need to be left out on the ice at all.
Isn’t it wonderful when that happens? Serendipity, she is kind.
Failure is real, is human, it is part of life, so I accept it and somehow celebrate it as part of a lesson that I will hardly forget.
And doubtless nor will we.
So, readers, I think you’ll agree that’s £150,000 well spent. Thank you, Arts Council. We should do this every year.
Oh, wait.
Update: Another Arts Council Triumph.
“A bench which, in its fragility and remoteness, becomes a silent witness of the dramatic changes that are occurring in the Arctic.
A bench with nobody to sit on.”
Thank you, David. I was actually weeping (with laughter).
Jarvis Cocker – at “the front-line of climate change”. I feel much safer now.
And Marcus “tosser” Brigstocke just writes about himself. Ker-ching!
“And Marcus ‘tosser’ Brigstocke just writes about himself. Ker-ching!”
If you browse the various “works” I think you’ll find that’s the preferred artistic approach. It’s perhaps best indicated by Ms Galeazzi, who takes great care to mention just how “courageous,” “outrageous” and “thought provoking” she is. I mean, please, it’s not just about someone being filmed opening a canister of gas. It’s also about…. her. And who wouldn’t be fascinated?
It’s basically a subsidised holiday for parasites, incompetents and the comically self-absorbed.
I swear, it’s like a sausage factory now. They just keep grinding it out:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/breathing-in-air.php
“Embrace the profundity”. Ha!
Once more you provide a devastating – and devastatingly funny – critique of the follies of fools. More please!
Marcus Brigstocke doing what he does best:
http://www.francescagaleazzi.com/art/photographs/imgs/markuss.jpg
“Michèle Noach collected Arctic poppies.”
Is there a law about removing native flora?
Poor old Daily Mash. Utterly outdone by real life.
So passing gas in Antarctica is Art? What about passing gas in Texas? I do that all the time! Where’s my funding?!
And that other thing, “A bench with nobody to sit on.”…I wasn’t aware that benches habitually sat on people…
Beatboxing for Gaia. Priceless. Can we keep ’em on ice forever?
“Yesterday for me was a roller-coaster of emotions: determination and failure, hope and fear, anticipation and disappointment… I started to feel that my project was gaining a different, and maybe stronger, meaning… And maybe the bench was an excuse and didn’t need to be left out on the ice at all.”
Thanks, David. That was very funny. 😀
“…a roller-coaster of emotions…”
I suspect Ms Galeazzi’s most emotional moment was clutching her gas cylinder and hearing the line, “The world’s press is on you.” Though that may have been an overstatement on the part of the cameraman, as until yesterday I’d never heard of Ms Galeazzi and her enormous artistic talent.
Hopefully this post goes some way to correcting that terrible oversight.
“Arts Council England works to get great art to everyone by championing, developing and investing in artistic experiences that enrich people’s lives. Great art inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better.”
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/about-us/
Shouldn’t someone tell them that C02 cylinders are not to be passed around like a bong?
Sounds like one person there got one thing right though.
“Men have produced a lot of great art over the centuries, or whatever… but… an iceberg kind of, basically, pisses on it.”
That’s right poseurs. You all suck. All your “works”, your “conciousness raising”, your “provocative edgyness”, it all pales in comparison to a big piece of f***ing ice. You’ll never compete with real beauty, in fact, your art sullies it. So take your petty little art pieces and go home and weep in shame.
So they released CO2 into the atmosphere, projected a film on to an glacier that was just sitting there minding its own business, and used an electric amplifier to imitate the sound of acoustic drums. Whose side are these people on?
The tracker was a fundamental part of the project, commenting on our contemporary surveillance society.
Two birds, one stone. A bargain.
Particularly when one considers that the same statist forces that seek to regulate carbon emissions and to promulgate the religion of ecology and the doctrine of anthropogenic global warming are the same statist forces that expand the contemporary surveillance society.
Oh come on people. Be fair. I mean we need to raise awareness of this whole global warming, climate change thing. So few people know about it and it’s never discussed in the media. Full marks, I say, to all these A-list celebrities, who have hugely demanding schedules, to take some time out to raise awareness for such an unfashionable cause. Surely, if anything, that is what the Arts Council is for?
Horace,
What’s funny (or depressing) is just how oblivious to parody most of the artists appear to be. There’s a lack of self-knowledge – a stunning cluelessness. And there’s no sign they feel obliged to justify either their own inadequacy or the public expense. It’s just presumed. This is what artists do, they get free money. I suspect that tells us something about exactly how far gone the Arts Council is.
Old economic model: Work and get paid for the work.
New economic model: Obtain sinecure.
David
“What’s funny (or depressing) is just how oblivious to parody most of the artists appear to be.”
Hence my leaden sarcasm. It isn’t funny. It’s depressing. I’m not dogmatically opposed to the idea of state funding for the arts. It’s just that, in practice, THEY seem to waste a lot of OUR money at a time when there is a crying need for limited funds elsewhere. You’ve argued (with me among others, and forgive me if I misrepresent you) that it is the very model of the Arts Council that is at fault, and I am beginning to come round to your way of thinking. That Beat-box moron did it, not to mention that silly half-wit with her gas canister and hopeful cry of “I’m an eeevil woman”.
Horace,
“…forgive me if I misrepresent you.”
No, that’s a fair summary. And even setting aside issues of a self-serving commissioning class engorged with public money (and a class of politically uniform subsidised inadequates), there’s still the dubious nature of the premise. When did subsidising commercially unviable art become a function of the welfare state, which is in effect what has happened?
As I said a while ago,
“When a person is taxed they lose some autonomy – their degrees of freedom are reduced, and sometimes they’re reduced quite a lot. Some reasons for inflicting this reduction are easier to justify than others… But depriving individuals of some autonomy and freedom shouldn’t be done lightly. And taking money from people via taxes in order to indulge artists whose work wouldn’t succeed on a commercial footing isn’t an entirely persuasive reason. And objecting to this reduction of autonomy doesn’t make one mean or vulgar.”
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2009/04/freeloading-and-snobbery.html
I submit my 5 stages of publicly funded art…they are as follows:
Awareness – WTF?
Amusement – What harmless little twits.
Anger – But my tax dollars are going to support this!?!?
Acceptance – Life is just plain absurd. Nothing can be done anyway.
Abjuration – Perhaps at sometime past, I took a nasty blow to the head and this is all some form of agnosia.
Note the fancy-shmancy alliteration. Is this not art? Where’s my check?
“non giving up at the first difficulty”
Right! They didn’t give up until 8 pm. Think of what Thomas Edison might’ve accomplished with that kind of sheer gutsy sticktoitiveness.
“My response was to place a park bench on a newly formed iceberg or floating ice-shelf off the fast-moving coast of West Greenland”
Uhm, there’s a fine line between stupid and littering (to paraphrase Spinal Tap).
It seems to me that the difference between really good art and crap is that everyone who sees really good art can just look at it and say, basically, “Wow!”. With crap, they have to go all the way to the North Pole and spend a fortune in money and words to explain it and its significance to human dignity, etc….
I.e., the more words they need to use to explain it, the higher up the crap scale it is. I am coming to believe that this may be a general law that applies to other human endeavors, starting with religion….
rxc,
The reliance on exposition and text is usually a bad sign. As Ms Galeazzi and her colleagues demonstrate, the more an artist has to tell you just how bold, important and crushingly intellectual their work is, the less reason there is to believe that any of it is true.
“Being with all these inspired people seems to have filled my head with a zillion ideas for musical endeavours that could easily save the world.”
Easily, I am sure. And I am also sure that 99 per cent of these zillion great ideas involve cheques from the state, all sent without any return envelope or for that matter any form of checking. No guv’mint inspectors duly inspecting the amount of lard and hot air used.
Down at the studio I’m working on an oil painting of a nude drinking a cup of tea and a cat sitting at her knee. (Sorry for the rhyme, but that’s the simplest way to describe it.) I finally got it to the point that the face doesn’t make me hate life, and today I’m going to try to work out her right hand, which still does, and do something about the background, which needs a massive revision. I am not a talented man compared to the greats of figurative painting. I am hoping to make a fine thing anyway, despite my limitations, of which I am painfully aware.
Nevertheless I take some encouragement from the knowledge that my abilities at their very nadir, exercised on my lousiest days as an artist, prior to my blessed morning caffeine intake, tower over those of someone who releases spent gases simultaneously from a steel canister and her flapping pie hole and calls it art of any sort.
Thank you for listening.
Franklin,
I like the cat btw. http://artblog.net/?name=2009-11-18-07-32-mezzo
Funny how you bitch about subsidy but you have a donations button. 😉
rv,
There’s a rather important distinction, one I’d have thought was hard to miss. The Arts Council is using money *taken coercively* regardless of whether taxpayers wish to support a given project or approve of the Arts Council’s leanings or its existence. It’s inherently arrogant; it presumes an entitlement to override personal choice, to the sum of half a billion or so a year. Whether I like it or not, and whether many of the readers of this site like it or not, we are being *forced* to bankroll excursions like the one above, and any number of other farces to be found in the archives.
Readers of this site are welcome to make a donation *if they wish*. I encourage it, of course. It helps cover the upkeep of this place and makes me feel warm inside. But it’s by no means compulsory. It isn’t a condition of being here.
It’s like comparing apples with bees.
Thank you, Anna.
Congratulations to all. Surely you’ve solved all your real problems if you can toss a quarter-million bucks down the toilet just to indulge someone’s moral vanity. That’s really good news!
Great post.
And once again rv goes down in flames…
Those are some pretty globally hot beats right there. Dedicated this this cause no doubt:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
David, more Arts Council good works…
“[Epileptic dancer] Rita Marcalo plans to try to induce a seizure on stage at The Bradford Playhouse as part of the 24-hour Involuntary Dances event on 11 December, which will also include dance and poetry readings. The audience will be invited to film the event on mobile phones. Ms Marcalo has stopped taking her medication ahead of the event. Arts Council England, which is funding the performance, said it aimed to raise awareness about the condition… The Arts Council both respects the creative decisions she makes in her work and supports her right as a disabled person to be heard.”
http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/6589
Karen,
Thanks for that. I suppose I ought to feel… transgressed or something, but it’s all so dismal and predictable.
“The Arts Council both respects the creative decisions she makes in her work and supports her right as a disabled person to be heard.”
Note the casual presumption: “The Arts Council supports her right as a disabled person to be heard.” But who’s stopping this woman from “being heard”? And who’s actually footing the bill? (What the Arts Council actually means is, “You the taxpayer are supporting this spectacle, whether you like it or not, because we have your wallet and We Know Best.”) If this woman wishes to endanger her health onstage and make an enormous fuss for those around her, supposedly to raise awareness of epilepsy, then why doesn’t she at least have the decency to do it on her own dime? Why the panhandling, and why make others complicit?
“Bradford Playhouse director Eleanor Bradford said: ‘Rita has made a decision that she wants to explore her own relationship with epilepsy’.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/8368159.stm
When did theatrical displays of this kind – “exploring her relationship with epilepsy” – become a function of the welfare state? When did it become Ms Marcalo’s artistic “right” to have this “exploration” subsidised by the taxpayer? And why has no-one at the Arts Council (or over at PP) thought to ask these rather obvious questions?
Update:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2009/11/another-arts-council-triumph.html
great post.
Most “artists” deserve to starve.