Anyone for a quiet riot?

I have no interest in rioting - apart from anything else, these days I would not fancy my chances running from gendarmes who are 30 years younger. But what does interest me is the humorous & non-violent repossession of public space, such as shopping centres. On the other hand, the growing trend for deadly dull, corporatist use of ‘art’ and ‘street theatre’ to somehow ‘humanise’ commercial places (and more particularly to control our use of them and movement around them) is a distraction – or just bad taste – and we could all do without it.

We all need to be more aware of the extent to which urban planners try to make sure we use what was once genuinely public space in an economically ‘efficient’ way. That is, their only aim is to deliver the biggest possible profits to retailers in the shortest possible time.

Once you dismiss tiresome (and hypocritical) middle class nose-pulling at such blatant commercialism, this, in itself, might not be so objectionable. If the real target was a ‘customer-centred-experience’, what could be the objection to professionals, for once, actually giving us what we want, not what some marketing air-head thinks is this year’s fashion?

But of course, the real problem is that what the (paying) customer wants was never the target. And where it gets murkier is when urban planning, in practice, begins to consider how to exclude ‘undesirables’, zoning in instead on the use of the smallest space for shortest time by the most economically active.

For example, some years ago an architectural student on work experience I knew was startled to discover how much thinking goes into making seats in indoor shopping centres too uncomfortable to sit on for more than, say, a 10 minute breather between shops. More recently I was equally surprised when an ‘insider’ revealed to me just how much work the Douglas redevelopers have done – for example around Strand Street – to ensure benches and shop doorways cannot become improvised overnight facilities for the homeless.

Then there is the care taken in developing lines of sight within indoor plazas. In my architectural student friend’s case (and incidentally, this was well before the current terrorist-obsessed CCTV era)  he discovered all about this while sitting quietly one day on a bench in a shopping centre. Rather ironically, he was there to study it for a class project.

He was astonished when a security guard approached and informed him that, as he had been observed sitting on the same bench for 20 minutes, previous to which for some 35 he had been observed moving around the shopping centre but not entering any shop, using any eating facility or purchasing anything in general, the management was evicting him. When he objected that he was sitting in a public place, doing no harm, and had a right to be there, he was informed that actually it was a private place, that he had no right to be there if he wasn’t purchasing goods or services, and that all round it might be better for his health if he left of his own volition, rather than being assisted to fly face first onto the pavement outside. The security goon was not quite that eloquent, but that was his general argument.

For my friend, along with others to whom he related this experience, this was quite enlightening, and the start of our attempts to establish if this was a ‘one off’ or a common feature of late 20^th century civil society, and if the latter what might be done about it.

One thing that quickly struck us was that multi-store complexes, shopping centres and so on are typically built on former public gathering places (e.g. town markets and other crossing places between communities), typically at huge public expenditure and by public bodies supposedly subject to the democratic process who hand over public land to private developers, often for free or at a token price, with the excuse that the town must develop economically or die.

It is also the case that in order for this to happen, troublesome small shopkeepers and private householders find themselves evicted by compulsory purchase orders. In past decades the excuse would simply be that they lowered the tone of the area (i.e. appeals to class prejudice), but one new variant on this is to play on cod-environmental concerns. Incidentally, we could also list the increasingly use by employers and government agencies of ’health and safety’ concerns to take away, rather than protect, the rights of workers and state housing tenants.

In effect then, for the good of the community the community is destroyed and its assets passed to fly-by-night developers and multinational shop chains, who move on to the next complex as soon as the rent or tax holiday ends and they are expected to pay their way like ordinary citizens.

But take away our playing fields, market places and parks, and what do we have left? What was the point of several centuries in which our ancestors moved from the country to the towns, the fields to the factories (and we more recently to offices and first-time buyer developments) if all of the rewards and compensations wrung from reluctant governments and employers are just taken away again? The other question is; 'What might we do about it?'

My suggestion is to take them back from time to time – even if only for an hour or two - but to have fun doing it. Just use them, but use them the way we want to use them, and not to the benefit of those who stole them from us.

One of the funniest examples I know of concerned elderly people in an Australian city, whose council shut the community centre where they used to meet and handed the land over to a developer for a shopping centre. These pensioners decided that as it was ‘their’ meeting place anyway, not another hangout for the rich and unspeakable, they would just continue meeting there. Which they did, by the hundred, with wheelchairs, Zimmer frames and all the rest of the paraphernalia of old age, bringing the entire place to a standstill day after day until the council and the developers caved in and offered an alternative meeting place.

In about 1997 this example directly inspired a Manchester anti-consumerist group’s campaign to celebrate Buy Nothing Day (look it up at http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/ , then act on it). ‘Workmen’ dragged sofas, comfy chairs and other household items into one of that city’s dullest shopping centres. ‘Coincidentally’ a number of ‘customers’ then started to use them to……well, to do little or nothing. As enraged security guards managed to clear one ‘obstruction’, more furniture was ‘delivered’ to another area, or another level, or another shopping centre, and so it went on all day around the city. Far from being annoyed, many people who came there merely to consume had a great day out too. They saw the joke and joined in, then went home, told others and in turn caused more people to see the joke, and caused more discussions. 

And did retail workers – people having little choice in the late 20^th century other than to take whatever ‘Mcjob’ is going – get annoyed? I think not. How else did the group know exactly where to bring in all that furniture, where to put it, and precisely when?

For another elegant variation on the theme, see, for example, http://thechap.net/cms/2012/04/the-siege-of-savile-row/ or the earlier attempts by ‘The Chaps’ to ‘Civilise the City’ or poke imaginative fun at the decidedly unmaginative modern art that wins major prizes and gets sold to the dull entrepreneurs who run drab corporations.

Think of such disruptions of the modern nightmare as quiet rioting, gentle striking, or any other play on such terms you want to invent. In a world from which an uncivilised minority is intent on disenfranchising us, sometimes just doing nothing – creatively rather than because you are meant to – can be the best response. And anyway, everybody (even consumers) needs the odd day off to do something interesting instead.

Art, the last asylum for lunatics

“Art is a fetish. As this is so, so mystification becomes part of the concept of art…art is nothing over and above what the bourgeoisie classifies as art, that is its meaning, but, from inside the category, such a thought is intolerable because it dismantles the beliefs that go with entering into the activities of the category. These beliefs posit the objective superiority of the form of life which is implicated. It is out of this sort of logical mystification that the category art emerged in the first place, that is, as an attempt on the part of the old order in society to make out its life was somehow committed to a superior form of knowledge.”

Roger L. Taylor

One reason this blog proceeds so slowly is that over the last two winters I foolishly got involved in a society which produces major Works of Art, as small town tradition dictates these can never be undertaken between Easter and August Bank Holiday. Thankfully, this winter’s work is now done and I am free until at least September, though in all fairness I can blame no-one but myself for the pain.

Art, as Mr Crisp often demonstrated, is a mistake. His writing is full of mischievous demolitions of art students and their tutors. He dismissed theatre as something for bored upper middle class women over a certain age. When asked what he had against painting, he asked in return what painters have against bare walls.

And he was right. Because nobody should waste a cold winter’s night on Art if they could be snug and warm in front of a TV screen, reading a funny book…. or just staring at a wall.

But colluding with others in a small, conservative community to produce Art is a far graver error. While a sane and reasonable person never commits Art in the first place, any mild mannered person who is only slightly insane can be driven to strong drink and mind-bending pharmaceuticals from over exposure to the upper middle class harridans who dominate such activity.

So what is my excuse?

Well, for one thing - as readers of this and my other blog may have surmised - I have previous form for Artistic Behaviour.

I started very early. Aged 10, my first literary efforts were published in an educational journal by a proud class teacher, and only the relative poverty of my parents prevented me from incarceration at a prestigious cathedral choir school for my entire adolescence. I was a semi-professional musician by 13, and things got worse in my 16^th year, when I was sentenced to two years in the musical equivalent of a young offenders centre. I then tried to go straight, and did manage around three years of useful employment as a nurse, with only minor involvement in the local folk and punk scene.

Then things got right out of hand. In fact, between 1979 and 1983 it is a matter of public record that I was involved in creative activities for which the governments of three countries were bamboozled into parting with sufficient monies to, say, build a few decent blocks of flats instead.

On this basis alone I cannot hide the fact that I once had an arts career, rather than just dabbling at weekends and in a manner which damaged only my own sanity and bank balance.

In my defence, I stopped on principle at 25, believing then - as now - that no ‘Artist’ has the right to live off public money for more than five years. Being idle by nature, and having achieved everything I set out to in four, I could just give the public a year off. I then retired to the Isle of Man, having ascertained that the local Art ‘scene’ was so far behind even middle of the road international trends that I could never be interested – or raise interest – in continuing.

That was in 1983, and funnily enough nothing has moved on here, while the surrounding islands have regressed rather than moved forward, so at absolutely no point have I weakened.

Until two winters ago, when a very young relative wanted to try something new, so the family joined up in support. Wisely, she retired herself four months later, and now only goes to watch her elders struggle.

Struggling with the work itself would be fine, as any challenge which draws one out of a small town comfort zone is beneficial. The problem is that the real struggle is a class one. 

Urban folk may smile at the rigid social structure of the small town cultural group. In reality though, the lower orders in large towns and cities suffer exactly the same diminution of their imaginative efforts. Expensive education did not make their critics even moderately clever. They just fail to understand a wider range of creative product.

By comparison, there may be awful social conservatism in small towns, but if you are creative and from a humble background you have the advantage that all you have to overcome are a few rednecks posing as highbrow ‘experts’.

As for the ‘High Art/Low Art’ false divide – how can anyone argue that High Art should be taken seriously when you see the kind of middle class conformists who not only consume it but are able to earn a living from it? How can Low Art be taken any more seriously when it depends on a system of patronage, criticism and consumption determined as absolutely as High Art by the very same bunch of cultural elitists and careerists?

In conclusion then, if you must dabble in ‘The Arts’ there are only two questions to consider.

(1) Is it an interesting challenge?

(2) Will you add to the sum of global joy by taking part?

If you can truthfully answer “Yes” to both you might as well waste your time. If you answer “No” to either, but still continue to make anything which could be construed by even a passing lunatic as ‘Art’, you should be hunted down with dogs.

The rest is nonsense.