Reflections on a Visit to a Stately Home: We are all in this Together (but Not in the Way You Thought)

I recently visited a stately home, Doddington Hall near Lincoln. Entrance to the gardens and the hall will set you back £10.50. I was lucky enough to have a tour of both.

Doddington Hall

The house was built in the Elizabethan period and has stayed in the same family ever since, although their surnames have changed through marriage. Having never been sold, the house has never been emptied and the guide explained that the house is littered with treasures. One chair was worth £40,000 - the complete set of four is worth much more. The family did not know this until a delegation of antiques experts from Christie's, Sotherby's, Buckingham Palace and the Swedish royal family arrived to investigate what might be lying around. The delegation found four sets of the chairs I refer to, scattered about the mansion. The family did not know how many they had. The same room had chandeliers made our of Venetian Murano glass (surely the most garish and overrated manufacturers of glass in the world). The guide explained that there were some important and expensive paintings, some by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Example of a Sickening Murano Chandelier

It's nice to know that if this family ever falls on hard times the worst they will have to do is sell a chair or two, a garish chandelier, fell a few trees or... if the worst comes to the worst... a Reynolds. Of course, it doesn't need to come to that if you are rich. While we were there we saw two people restoring the families collection of tapestries. Apparently they have already spent over 80,000 hours working on this. I asked who was paying for the restoration work: a charitable grant. I wonder what my chances are of gaining a charitable grant to upholster a sofa or restore some paintings? I won't hold my breath. On the gardens tour we were told that, since this is not a National Trust property, they have fewer restrictions. One garden was reclaimed from agricultural use - that must have been expensive. Not to worry, it was funded by a National Lottery Heritage Grant. Presumably I am entitled to the same fund to redesign my garden, so long as I open it up to the public for £5 a ticket. I won't hold my breath.

Our Painting, by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Later on the tour we saw a portrait of "the man who saved Doddington Hall". We were told that this great man made the "brave decision" to repair the roof when it was leaking in the 1950s. At this time, just after the war, we were losing stately homes like this at a rate of knots. The landed gentry were struggling to keep up with the cost of running such massive buildings - especially since they rarely had jobs. But what is so "brave" about saving your home? It would have been expensive to repair such a big roof, for sure, but you can either afford the repairs, or you lose your house. He couldn't sell the chairs. Remember, the family were ignorant to their value and even their quantity. Did he bravely did into his own pocket? Not exactly. He bequeathed a Reynolds to the nation in return for the funds. That must have been tough - losing a valuable painting... and one that is of a family member too. Not to worry though, the painting remains in Doddington Hall of course. The guide explained that the painting is the reason that we are able to visit the house - because we paid for the roof (and we own the painting). Fair deal, but why then do we still have to pay £10.50 to see it?

In one way or another we have paid for the upkeep of this house, its grounds and its contents, which are still (with the exception of the Reynolds) privately owned. Our taxes, charitable donations, lottery tickets and entrance fees all prop up this millionaire family. My final observations on the tour of the house were two photographs, presumably of Anthony Jarvis (the previous owner of Doddington Hall, who has now passed it to his daughter). In one he was meeting Margaret Thatcher. In the other David Cameron is pouring champagne for him. Under the photographer there is a caption that reads "More Bollinger? Excellent policy Prime Minister". Seeing Mr Cameron again reminded me of his dictum that "we are all in this together". So I see. Indeed we are all in this together, but not in the way that we thought. We, the 99%, have banded together to support the 1%. We are all on the same team.

Bon hiver: A journey through a Winter Landscape

Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

1 December 2012 - 3 February 2013

Olafur Eliasson The Forked Forest Path

The proposed theme of this exhibition was, we are told, “a journey through the winter landscape” and superficially this is evident but I cannot help but feel that time is the real subject. Bon Hiver, we are told, is a French greeting meaning “good winter” and it used on the day of the first snowfall. This, in itself, reminds me of the cyclical nature of time in nature, but I also found time recurring throughout the exhibition.
Olafur Eliasson’s excellent, and well know, The Forked Forest Path is made entirely from large sticks (or small branches) which are precariously propping each other up to form a forest in the gallery space through which visitors can walk. It looks as though it may fall over at any moment – and with the volume of visitors it was impossible not to occasionally brush up against some of the spindly twigs. The piece is as ephemeral as it is timeless: timeless in that the material from which it is made cannot be dated (and probably does not age very much either).
The forest path does indeed fork and to the left you are led into a room with a work by Joachim Koester that further evokes the notion of time through his use of antiquated machinery – a slide projector. The slides project images of a timeless landscape covered in snow, devoid of humans or any human intervention. We learn through text projected over the images that this is an expedition to the North Pole. Anecdotes give us glimpses not only of what the adventurers are up to at the time the slide was taken (resting, drinking coffee etc.) but also where we are and who we are with: “the Greenlanders refused to go any further”. I imagine that Greenland is ancient land, but then I recall the temporal nature of the North Pole itself – how it is made of ice, not rock and earth, and how it moves with the currents so that no two expeditions reach the same physical point: a flag mounted at the North Pole will simply drift away on its glacier. Is Greenland “ancient land”? It doesn’t really matter whether it is or not. The point is, the images recall ancient land – a land before humans – and yet at the same time make us think of their precious temporality as icecaps drift or melt.
Walking back through the forked forest path you arrive at a room on the right hand side. The most striking piece of work in the room is, perhaps, Mariele Neudecker’s The Sea of Ice. Neudecker has made a 3D replica of Friedrich’s painting of the same name and immersed it in a fish tank. The opaque walls of the tank (or perhaps the murky liquid that fills it) evoke mist: a mist that recalls Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. While instantly reminiscent of Friedrich’s The Sea of Ice (also called The Wreck of Hope) the opaqueness makes it somewhat difficult to get a good view. You walk around the tank peering in to get the best angle and as you do so you begin to appreciate the curious light that Neudecker has achieved and the optical illusions that you get with tanks of water – where as you turn a corner the image disappears for a second, only to reappear anew from a distinctly different angle. This reminded me of viewing a moving hologram. In this way you “enter” Friedrich’s painting, but you are able to walk around it too. Neudecker has created not only a 3D version, but also a sensory experience, in the same way that Eliasson created a sensory experience by creating a forest out of branches in the gallery space through which you walk. In a similar way, Koester created a sensory experience through his “full wall” projections and the noise of the clicking slides. The projector itself becomes part of the work and recalls expedition briefings (which might use such imagery, or such equipment). In this sense, in a way, you enter the work.
On the wall opposite The Sea of Ice hang two photographs by Kelly Richardson. In these works Richardson has taken Polaroid snapshots, scanned them and enlarged them to the point that the image breaks down. This creates something dreamlike out of something disposable something ephemeral, something fleeting? Is time also a factor in this work? By scanning the analogue prints Richardson digitises them, creating a sort of time travel: she takes a now antiquated medium and drags it into the 21^st Century. In doing so she also pixelates the image which now mimics CCTV or grainy film stills but also looks like cyanotypes (perhaps a reference to photography’s relationship with nature or to its roots?).
To the left there is another piece by Richardson, a shaky handheld film of the moon. The image is distorted, we find out from the wall text, by “vapours”. The rustling, crackling sound makes us aware of ourselves and humans are made “visible” in yet another unpopulated “landscape” in much the same manner as Koester’s slide projector. The wall text goes on to explain that the sound is of popcorn cracking on a campfire (also the source of heat and the “vapours” that distort the image as they pass by the lens).
There is one more (back)room to this exhibition but this time we encounter older artworks: paintings by artists such as Eric Ravilious (whose picture is included in the gallery publicity for this exhibition). This room failed to achieve the sensory experience felt before it and left the whole exhibition somewhat flat. If you didn’t know better you could be mistaken for thinking you had finished the exhibition and entered the permanent collection (ironically it is Eliasson’s The Forked Forest Path is owned by the Towner). Curiously, time is still evident, but not in a good way. You feel a clash of eras as you drift from a contemporary art exhibition into something older.
Kelly Richardson’s photographs were part of her Supernatural Series. Supernatural etymologically means above or beyond nature. The clash of times in Bon Hiver is augmented as you literally go above nature (above this exhibition) to Kelly Richardson’s solo show upstairs (2 February – 14 April 2013 http://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/exhibition/kelly-richardson/). Richardson’s HD films are digitally projected and incorporate animation. Sci-Fi trees made out of light appear and disappear on a lunar-esque landscape arousing the notion of the hologram felt when viewing Neudecker’s Sea of Ice. Richardson’s landscapes are hyper-real, videogame-like and yet recall timeless mythology in their subject matter (the stag and the forest for example). Through her work we imagine a world run out of nature, a world increasingly digitised and reliant on new technologies. We do not encounter the dystopia that the press release tells us to expect, but rather an uneasy and ambiguous balance between the familiar landscape and the unknown future.
Richardson’s films point to an uncertain future but in doing so also look back to the Romantic sublime of Friedrich. The uncertainty of what’s beyond the frontier, the limit of man’s endurance for extreme nature, was for the Romantic adventurer, the source of excitement and terror that the technological future holds for us today. With no new lands left to discover, cyberspace is our final frontier. Rather than replacing nature, it is technology’s future relationship with nature that is explored in Richardson’s films and with this in mind Bon Hiver also elicits questions about how we can understand a future where the once seemingly timeless and unchanging “nature” (represented by the landscape) is called into question. Will “technology” be its saviour or help facilitate its demise?

Carl Andre: Mass and Matter//Rosa Barba: Subject to Constant Change

Turner Contemporary, Margate
1 February - 6 May 2013

Rosa Barba, Subject to Constant Change

Fans of Minimalism will want to take a trip to the Turner Contemporary in Margate. The gallery currently has two exhibitions: Mass and Matter by Carl Andre and Subject to Constant Change by Rosa Barba (both 1 February 2013 – 6 May 2013).
What can I say about Carl Andre that hasn’t already been said? More importantly, what can Turner Contemporary (TC) say about Carl Andre that hasn’t already been said? TC focus as much on his poems as his sculpture – which is refreshing. They also point out that he barely made any sculpture while working on the railways, turning instead to hand written and, latterly, typewritten poems. Andre is quoted as saying that he does not aim to express him self through words when doing so, but instead he rearranges the words of poems into columns and rows in much the same fashion as Jack does in The Shining.
In focusing on this period in Andre’s career we draw parallels between his industrial labour (and that of his father, the ship yard where he grew up and so forth) and his sculptural works. It is my understanding that the point of minimalism is, through reducing the artwork to its bare bones, to make the viewer aware of their own bodies and their physical relationship with material (with mass and matter as it were). The problem with this show is that there are simply too many sculptures crammed into one relatively small room. Works are not allowed to breath, you cannot “experience” one material without another lingering in the periphery.
Andre famously remarked that as Tuner severed colour from depiction, so he wanted to sever material from form. And yet, responding to a question (in a video about the exhibition on the TC website) about his choice of materials Andre confesses that economics is the main fact as “there’s usually a budget involved”. What was a tediously forced link with Turner (because the gallery bears his name, because of a tenuous link between the artist and Margate…sigh) turns out to expose a major inconsistency in Andre’s oeuvre. Are the materials important or does he just go with what is available? Is the space around the artworks important, or does he just cram in as much work as possible?
Rosa Barba is not a minimalist but she is an excellent example of Andre’s legacy in contemporary art. At first glance we can instantly identify her show as having all the ingredients of a first rate contemporary art exhibition. It is well laid out with plenty of space between works, just as Andre’s should have been. In fact, it is puzzling that so much space was given over to Barba at the expense of the better-known Andre. The exhibition can broadly be described as sculptural video installation. Sculptures are made out of celluloid film, sometimes moving, run by small motors. There is a nostalgic cool about old film projectors and I am often surprised by how this continually captures the imagination of my students. In their case, it is a cheap medium to play with: old, broken, projectors and used or out of date film can easily be found at car boot fayres or from Freecycle. Barba does seem to be operating in the same way “playing” with the medium but she goes beyond this simply in terms of display. Everything is exquisitely made – the fittings, the “vitrines” that house some sculptures. Her three largest pieces – a floor to ceiling laser cut text with a movie projector casting a beautiful shadow onto the wall behind it and, in the other room, text on several moving celluloid moving films and a large projected film – are all installed in a manner that would make Donald Judd proud. The back projected film falls on a large screen set in the centre of the room which reeks of minimalist cool.
But what about the content of the film? We are told that it was filmed in Manchester and Kent because…it will be exhibited in Manchester and Kent (sigh…). The propensity for linking everything to TC’s geographical location, or through this to Turner himself, is becoming evermore disappointing and unoriginal. It seems that artists are forced to make connections that seem, well… forced. Carl Andre’s only connection was through the quotation about Turner but one has to wonder about his commitment to a show in which he is in included (because of a sound-bite nod to Turner?) only to be crammed into one room. Perhaps the allure of his first UK solo exhibition in a public gallery for 10 years was too much? As with Andre, it’s all about the display to the detriment of the content for Barba. In the same film about the exhibition I mentioned above, Barba dodges a question from a kind of focus group about the show (a way of engaging with the “locals” and to prove that TC has value through social and economic regeneration) by admitting that she doesn’t have all the answers. Why? Because there are no answers. As with Carl Andre, Barba is “not a conceptual artist” and there are certainly no mysteries (mathematical of otherwise) behind her work at all. Simply, what you see is what you get.
Barba deconstructs the physical elements of film, but to what end? We are supposed to consider the end of the industrial age and the transition to the digital age and Barba’s film refers to Manchester as being the first industrial metropolis (debatable) and Margate as being emblematic of the seaside holiday industry that sprung up as a result. I see Barba’s deconstructed use of celluloid and light as being vacuous. Intrigue with antiquated machinery allows for curious play, for a while, but ultimately reveals nothing. A nostalgic reflection on our transition through the industrial age maybe, but nothing more.

Boris Johnson on why salaries are a luxury

"Young Londoners will now have to do 13 weeks unpaid work for their £56 a week dole money". 

Guest Blogger Boris Johnson explains the benefits of unpaid work.

Reactive from the left wing press has been predicable in response to my new scheme.  In fact, this is excellent news for young Londoners as they will now be able to gain valuable experience that the country could not otherwise afford to give them. Those who claim that this is 'work', and as such should be paid,  are just bleeding heart liberals who don't understand economics. People focus too much on money these days. What's important is that, today, I can unveil a plan to create 200,000 jobs over the next four years.

Labour's introduction of the minimum wage has been disastrous for this country - I mean, what business can afford to pay £6.08 per hour in the current climate? That's £228 a week, £912 per month or potentially a massive £10,000 per year for a full time temp! We're just not competitive any more. 

(Chris) Grayling took a swipe at the Labour party and those campaigning against "workfare". "The usual suspects will cry 'slave labour''. They always do. But they are the people who believe that young claimants have the right to sit at home playing computer games. I simply disagree."

I agree with Chris Grayling - we must end this "something for nothing" culture. It's long overdue for good, honest, businesses to be able to employ these people - without having to pay them. The rise in tuition fees and repeal of EMA should ensure there are plenty of young people available for the new 'workfare' scheme.

Working Class 'pride' now seems laughable. Unless you are generating wealth for the economy, you are a drag on the economy. Thank God we deregulated the City in the 80s - the bankers are the only ones who contribute anything nowadays.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is the Mayor of London. He was born in New York and educated at the European School in Brussels before attending Eton and Oxford University.  His father is employed by the World Bank.

On Militant Art: Part 4 - Voina

Voina: "Dick in FSB Captivity"

Gavin Grindon claimed that most Art Activism merely mimics activism in a "context without consequences". He also tells us that at while Art Activism is currently very popular, drawing down funding and support from liberal art institutions, it is also being criminalised and excluded as 'terrorist' by political establishments: the legal definition of 'terrorism' being extended to include non-violent civil disobedience: the 'eco-terrorist' for example (Art Monthly 2010 #333 pp 9-12). Art Activism sits in a difficult position: if it merely re-presents social conflict in a gallery setting, or within the gallery system, it can come across as just playing with real, big issues and have no real impact. On the other hand, as Boris Groys points out (Art Power 2008), if art becomes embroiled in politics and creating social change it risks becoming mere activism (and losing the 'art'). The Voina art collective raises the question of how contemporary practice can straddle this boundary of making socio-political art with an impact that can also be judged aesthetically - 'as art'. 

Voina (which means "War" in Russian) is a Russian art collective, founded in 2006 by husband and wife Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol. Other key members include 'Preseident' Leonid Nikolayev and Alexei Plutser-Sarno (AKA Plucer).  As with previous examples of militant art on this blog, Voina operate in the Dadaist tradition. Examples of their performances include:

How to snatch a chicken: the tale of how one cunt fed all of Voina

a live public orgy at the State Biological Museum to mock the election of Dmitry Medvedev; a 180-foot-high projection of a skull-and-crossbones on the exterior of Russia's parliament; theft of a supermarket chicken by inserting it into a member's vagina; flipping police cars over; setting fire to a prison transport van; and painting an enormous cock on a drawbridge facing a police building (formerly the KGB Head Quarters) in St. Petersburg.  

One of Voina's supporters, the radical curator Andrei V. Yerofeyev, was fined...

for "inciting religious hatred" in connection with a show of "Forbidden Art" he co-curated Moscow's Sakharov Museum [...] In 2009, Voina had stormed the court when charges were brought against him. Assuming the persona of a band called Cock in the Ass, Voina members performed a raucous punk song titled "All Cops are Bastards" in court as a theatrical gesture of solidarity with Yerofeyev and his co-defendant. (Art Info)

Cock in Ass

This, no doubt, reminds us of a more familiar political protest in Russia (due to the current high levels of media coverage): that of the female Punk Band Pussy Riot who have been sentenced for two years for performing a protest song (which may have featured bad language and anti-Putin sentiments) in a cathedral. Voina, despite their more radical stunts, have so far evaded such harsh sentences. Two members, imprisoned for their role in Palace Revolution (where they up-turned Police cars in St. Petersburg) were released in March after Banksy rasied their £90K bail money from an online auction of his work. The BBC described "Palace Revolution" as involving:

...31 activists; five to do the heavy lifting, while the rest filmed what was happening, acted as lookouts and distracted the police by pretending to be lost tourists.(BBC)

While Grindon draws our attention to the use of anti-terrorist laws against the likes of Green Peace, with the likes of Pussy Riot and Voina we have seen charges of political, racial, religious or ideological hatred levied at the artists (you know you're in trouble when they pull that one out... it's like health and safety... no one feels they have the authority to challenge it). Just making a protest wouldn't get Pussy Riot put in prison - but if the protest (in a cathedral) were to be interpreted as being motivated by religious hatred... This is the danger of puritan attitudes towards Islamophobia - suddenly a comment or action can be exacerbated and you can be attacked as an extremist (extremist/terrorist, it doesn't matter which). This is worrying indeed as we are already in a situation where only a very narrow spectrum of political ideologies is deemed acceptable - in the US 'Liberal' is a dirty word on a par with 'communist' nearly (imagine the horror!). In the UK we have no real left wing parties anymore (you can't really call Respect a party and Labour/Lib Dems are committed free-marketeers), while on the right UKIP are considered acceptable (just about). The lack of democratic representation drives people towards the English Defense League, British National Party (although they've recently taken a kicking) or the National Front. 

Voina are currently on the run. Although they are wanted by Interpol, they managed to co-curate this year's Berlin Biennale with Artur Żmijewski, who organised political actions for the Biennale supporting causes including freeing Belarus’ political prisoners, the Occupy Movement, and opposing the recent international arrest warrants issued for Oleg Vornikov and Natalia Sokol. 

So, how do Voina address Grindon's accusation that art activism cannot "make a difference" and/or Groys's position that if it does "make a difference" it risks losing its status as art?

Take the example of fire-bombing a Police transport: this is clearly a militant and illegal activity. It is, perhaps, more easily accepted as activism than art. Voina member Alexei Plutser-Sarno explains that by burning it the group “stirred up discussion” in the entire country [... and that such] actions are an adequate reaction to all those batteries, tortures and arrests of innocent people, to the situation when thousands of political prisoners are kept in jails all over the country.” Writing for Art Info (January 2012) Kyle Chayka, Alexander Forbes sum up Voina's position on the definition of art: 

the difference between performance art and political activism is art’s public nature and the importance of laying claim to your work. “If an activist secretly burns a cop truck at night, it won’t be art. It will be the revenge of an activist,” Plutser-Sarno wrote. “But to burn it openly and proclaim to the entire country: ‘I am an artist. I burned down your prison, symbol of totalitarianism. This autodafe is our art action,’ then it becomes a piece of art. We made people discuss it as an artistic action.”(Art Info) [Plutser-Sarno is currently in hiding abroad].

Crazy Leo

This definition is not incompatible with US artist Mel Chin who, speaking about his activist art piece Operation Paydirt (which aimed to find a solution for the high lead contamination in the soil surrounding New Orleans) told Claire Bishop that his work can be judged aesthetically and politically as a landscape without lead pollution would be beautiful. Another action at first seems less militant and more Dadaist. Leonid (crazy Leo) Nikolayev climbs onto a police car with a blue bucket on his head "to protest against the widespread use of blue emergency lights by officials who cannot be bothered to sit in Moscow traffic jams" (BBC). He then runs blind down busy streets trying to avoid arrest: a police officer pulls the bucket off his head only to reveal another, smaller, blue bucket. This may seem comical and absurd (and it is) but it also fits into an anarchist tradition in that it challenges authority and by 'doing' helps others to see that we can be more free, live without fear and be braver. 

Decembrists Commemoration: Public Execution in the Supermarket

There are many more examples which I do not have the time to recount here (but videos can be seen on Plucer's own blog). Here are a few of the more outrageous stunts. Judge for yourselves, but we here at Malaised feel that Voina are one of the most ground-breaking and cutting edge performance art activists in the world right now:
 

In Decembrists Commemoration Voina staged the mock lynching of five people in Moscow's largest supermarket. The five victims represented Jews, Central Asian Immigrants, and homosexuals - "a special gift to the Russian corrupted authorities, who incite homophobia, misanthropy and anti-Semitism; as a result the killings of Central Asians guest workers [...] have become an everyday reality in Russia."  (Plucer). Of course, the action was also to remind Russians of the libertarian ideals of the country’s first revolutionists - the five 'Decembrists' hanged in 1826.

Cop in a cassock

Also in a supermarket a Voina member dressed in a police uniform covered by a Russian Orthodox cassock and large cross, shoplifted alcohol and food "with the impunity enjoyed by priests and cops in today’s Russia". Following  on with another large corporation in the food industry Voina stormed McDonald's hurling stray cats behind the counter "As a result the fast-food products were spoilt, hungry cats – fed".

Mordovian Hour

Two days before the election of Dmitry Medvedev, Voina staged a live public orgy at the State Museum of Biology. '

 

While five couples were copulating, the Voina chief media artist Alexei Plutser-Sarno, wearing a tuxedo and a top-hat, was holding a black pre-electoral banner reading "Fuck for the Heir - Medvedev’s little Bear! [...] in Russia everyone fucks each other and the little president looks at it with delight". Voina mocked the farcical and pornographic elections in the country, as Medvedev just inherited the V. Putin's presidential throne".

Fuck for the Heir - Medvedev’s little Bear!

Further reading:

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/755205/voina-explains-why-firebombing-a-police-tank-is-a-piece-of-art
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11982984
http://plucer.livejournal.com/531761.html#cutid1
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/38894/escape-artist-wanted-voina-art-anarchist-outfoxes-russian-police-again-fleeing-on-his-bike/
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37437/police-baiting-penis-graffiti-by-radical-voina-collective-wins-14k-russian-innovation-prize/
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36573/banksy-bankrolls-jailed-russian-art-anarchists/
http://plucer.livejournal.com/266853.html
http://www.animalnewyork.com/2011/voina-oleg-not-arrested-but-internationally-wanted/

The Aesthetics of Assange

Julian Assange addresses the crowd outside the Ecuadorian embassy today

Julian Assange appeared in public today, for the first time in 61 days. A small group of pro-Assange protesters lined the pavement opposite the Ecuadorian embassy where Assange is claiming asylum and the rest of the surrounding streets were taken up with a large police presence, press and tourists. The atmosphere was friendly but excited as the Met Police helicopter circled overhead (presumably to help catch Assange should he make a bolt for it). A few diplomatic cars with blacked out windows sped away and one person in the crowd commented "that's it, he's gone". But he wasn't gone. He did appear, slightly later than his advertised 2pm slot, on a balcony - just out of reach from the police (both physically and legally). 

But what does this mean in aesthetic terms? Assange knows better than anyone that since around 9-11 we have entered into a Bond Movie. The (seemingly) loan baddie Osama takes on America and the West in a daring terrorist attack, unbelievably hitting the Pentagon and the WTC. Then some of his henchmen hit the media: a one eyed man with hooks for hands called Abu, a man who decapitates statues with a razor-tipped top hat and another man who releases all the world's secrets via the Internet... you can't make it up.

The great American intellectual George W. Bush, during his presidency, simplified the War on Terror that followed for us, by explaining that "you are either with us or against us" and often adding that the terrorists' motives were simply that that "hate freedom".  With Assange though there is a problem, to invoke Spinal Tap: there's a bit too much fucking freedom if you ask me. In fact Assange has crowned himself price of truth and freedom - how can we fight against that? This reminds me of George W's response to the Yes Men's prank website www.gwbush.com and the satirical campaign "Yes Bush Can!" that followed in the run up to the 2000 election. While the website was only intended to highlight hypocrisies on the real Bush website George W didn't like it at all. In fact he said that they had gone too far and that there should be limits on freedom of speech (imagine Spitting Image being taken to court...) At the same time as the Assange case we has Pussy Riot beginning their 2 year prison sentence for... well, playing an anti-Putin Punk protest song in a cathedral. I guess the church could be pissed about trespass (although I'm pretty sure they're supposed to forgive trespasses) and maybe not Punk fans but guess what? The Russian Orthodox Church called for clemency! So who prosecuted? And for what? It's a joke. You might be able to convince me that they broke a law but a two year custodial sentence? We all know this is about Putin sending out a message: criticise me, and you'll end up in prison.

One of two diplomatic vehicles (with blacked-out rear windows) leaves the embassy unchallenged

Meat wagons line up outside Harrods

 This makes it very difficult to call for limits on freedom of speech without sounding like a right wing fanatic. But I reckon there should be limits. Surely releasing defence plans (read "weaknesses") is irresponsible. We are operating in an information age vulnerable to cyber attack but old school defence has always guarded its secrets - think of the Cold War or even Bletchley Park. Certain information in the wrong hands can cost lives.

Back to aesthetics and we can now see that Assange is evoking cinema (Bond baddies), music (Punk and protest songs in general) and art (specifically protest art and culture jamming in the Yes Men!). He was also evoking Eva Perón through the manner of his address. I also feel the white hair adds an element of Bond baddie and the French-sounding name coupled with the Australian-British(?) identity adds a kind of suave debonair sophistication also found in Bond movies. Furthermore Assange appears to have made the US and UK act as if it is they who are in a Bond movie. Cold War era espionage and trickery are back on the table. Do they really think we are so stupid that we won't see through these sexual assault "accusations"? Anyone with half a brain cell can see it's a set up. Just as anyone with an ounce of moral fibre or sense of justice can see that Pussy Riot have been fitted up: it's political. But I have a solution: Assange should offer to stand trial, in Sweden, in absentia. He could appear via video link. If found guilty he should give himself up and serve the sentence, if not in Sweden then in the UK or Ecuador even. Surely the UK couldn't object to him being moved from the embassy if he were going to prison? (whether in Sweden or elsewhere). 

Met Police Helicopter presumably waiting to track Assange should he make a run for it!

So, aesthetically, we can expect the UK or US government to poison Assange by ascertaining only he in the embassy eats a certain food product (Vegemite I expect), or kill him with a poison blow-dart the next time he appears on the balcony. Perhaps Assange will evade the blow-dart and escape to Ecuador on a jet-pack? Assange could be said to have brought issues of freedom of speech and the policing of the Internet into the public conscious and debate and artistically this could be seen as operating in the same mould as the Yes Men and many others (see my posts on Militant Art for examples).

Thomas Bresolin: Сучьи войны (Bitch war)

Following on from our post about Chris Burden, Martin Lang makes a connection between Burden and a contemporary artist who inflicts violence on himself, on others and encourages others to inflict violence on him. For 'Bitch War' Bresolin carried out an eight-day hunger strike culminating with a performance in which he was force-fed (see the video below).

 

Read Martin's full review on a-n online here (or see below) to find out how he links Bresolinand Burden and how he thinks Bresolin's eight-day hunger strike was not out of solidarity for prisoners, but for starving artists.