One & Other: But is I Art?
As the time for my own turn on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square approaches, I’ll add the occasional post on the subject here. You can catch up with all of my updates with this link.
Announcing the first day of the Antony Gormley’s One & Other, which, for the unaware, puts members of the public atop the Fourth Plinth for an hour each, 24 hours a day for 100 days, Sky News asked the headline question: “Is it art, or just a highbrow Big Brother?” It’s a tired refrain by now. The question of whether or not something is art is such a blind alley: what it really seems to ask is “what is art?” or worse, “why isn’t it speaking directly to me?” That there is disagreement over whether something is a worthwhile piece of art should never be a surprise. It should probably be a requirement.
I don’t know if Sky News ever communicates with Sky Arts, but if One & Other is a “highbrow Big Brother” (i.e. highbrow because none of the participants have been manouevred into positions where there’s an increased chance that they’ll punch or shag each other), then Sky must bear some of the responsibility. What started out as a intervention by the ordinary into the ceremonial, dragging and dropping people from their habitual environment into the most public of spaces, has been turned into rolling news to be examined from every angle, tweeted about and photographed. Their weekly round-up of the “best of the plinth” suggests an attempt to turn it into a competition, with each plinther compelled to be more entertaining or eye-catching than the last.
Although I’ve dipped into the live feed from the Plinth and found it occasionally compelling, even when “nothing” (slang term for moments where people stop dancing or shouting through a megaphone) is happening, it has raised the question for me of where the “space” of the plinth is. Is it a spontaneous relationship between the material reality of the plinth and the people passing by, an ephemeral, unrepeatable performance or a hypermediated spectacle that can be paused, rewound, re-examined and catalogued? I can’t help feeling that the physical space of the plinth is affected by its parallel existence in multiple “virtual” spaces around the world, though this doesn’t have to be a negative effect. This morning I enjoyed Michelle, who took a very contemplative approach. To many observers, I suppose she “did nothing” or “just stood there”, for the hour, but she seemed to be having a serene, private moment in front of all those cameras. And surely that’s fascination enough, right?
Having said all that, the sight of Gerald dressed in a Godzilla suit playing swingball and stomping on a cardboard Houses of Parliament at 8am made me smile for almost a full hour. I think it was the mixture of personal, self-absorbed enjoyment and focus on the chance to play around, and the awareness of a very public spectacle that made it completely charming. If you have to ask whether or not its art, then please adjust your definition of art.
12 July, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Thanks for your post. It’s been interesting to see what happens on the Fourth Plinth on Gormley’s watch and what that says about the changing nature of public art. I for one, find it a refreshing break from all the bronze portraits that are all too familiar and found in cities worldwide. If the opportunity to be on the plinth turns into a competition, then isn’t that an accurate reflection of the world we live in?
13 July, 2009 at 10:20 am
Certainly, if it got squeezed into the shape of another “reality TV” format, it would say something definite about the contemporary desire to use multimedia platforms to impose narrative order on potential chaos. I’m happy for One & Other to be a true experiment, and to go in any direction: that’s why I’m perturbed by demands that it must entertain (especially if that entertainment is defined in very narrow terms). What I mean to say is that the tight formatting of the official TV coverage by the Plinth’s sponsors might already have defined some of the directions in which the project can go, rather than providing a totally free platform.
14 July, 2009 at 11:17 am
Gerald was great, and very funny. Watching him not-really play swingball almost left me in tears. He also has the least annoying “about me” section that I’ve seen so far…
14 July, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Those “about me” bits are compiled from the little questionnaire everyone filled in when they applied. I, for one, didn’t know they’d be posted up like that on the website. I have a password now, so I can get in and change it if I have time and can be bothered.
I also liked when Gerald started reading Time Out. Don’t miss the “making of…” http://www.oneandother.co.uk/blog/2009/07/godzillas-day-out.html
14 July, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Gerald is my hero.
23 July, 2009 at 8:58 am
[...] my hour on the plinth now just nine days away, I found this an interesting read. Posted by Nick @ 7:57 am :: Britain, Life, Random thoughts Comment RSS :: [...]
25 July, 2009 at 10:49 pm
[...] In a previous post, I bemoaned the critics’ (and non-professional observers’) tendency to reduce discussion of the plinth to the question of “is it art?” At the best of times, life and art don’t divide themselves from each other so starkly for it to be a pertinent question. There’s no tipping point where something becomes quotidian enough to stop being art and becomes a facet of life. One & Other is an ongoing project, and its accretion of detail to fill out a vivid picture of Britain’s attitudes to public art (which I suspect might turn out to be the real point of debate) is far more meaningful than any one participant’s contribution. If you’ve watched a number of plinthers, you will probably have noticed how upbeat the whole thing is. Almost nobody has used their hour to enact anything menacing, macabre or melancholic. Given the chance to do something creative (although creation is not essential to it – simple presence is the defining element, to my mind), Britons have opted to be boisterous, vivid and positive. This is a work with an unwarranted, but not unwelcome happiness at its core. Maybe that’s what riled a lot of critics – One & Other has none of the qualities of earnestness or expertise that critics of contemporary art usually require. That predictable refrain about the project becoming a highbrow Big Brother is hardly necessary, not least because it’s not highbrow, and because, unlike Big Brother, One & Other can still posit pertinent questions about the public’s relationship with cameras, the internet, celebrity and fame. Just look at the multidirectional exchanges of images, from photographs of plinthers, by plinthers, and the multi-angled perspectives available to its spectators. This is most obvious in the looks of recognition between people photographing each other while in the camera zone of the live feed: [...]
28 November, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Good post, thank you. I signed up to your blog rss feed.