NOBODY GO ANYWHERE:
STAY HOME MAKE ART
A SPART Action Manifesto, by Justin McKeown
Since time immemorial the fame of one’s name nationally, or internationally, has been a mark of success. This is particularly true of the arts, whose primary function is to entertain, whether it be through beauty, or through something slightly ‘deeper’, such as intellectual musing or political comment. It is a truism that most ambitious young artists today tend to seek a career through which their names, even more than their art, will become internationally recognised.
What are the reasons for this? At one point in history it would have made a certain amount of business sense to be internationally known. You could be the IBM of the art world, selling every single painting, sculpture, video, drawing, installation, performance (delete as appropriate) you make for enough money to keep a small family from Ballymurphy in food and clothes for a year.
But these days most artists could hardly be said to conduct ‘business’ since, for the most part, the money they earn from exhibitions seems to be little more than the price of their ‘jollies’ while away with their artwork. This could hardly be called ‘business’, more of a funded leisure activity. If anyone doubts this then they should stop to consider the ‘other’ jobs that most artists have to engage in to keep a roof over their head and food in their stomachs.
If it’s not for the money, then it must be something to with fame? Maybe that’s why young artists seek an international career? That makes a certain amount of sense. Yet, surely artists are not as superficial as that? Surely they don’t just desire fame for the sake of fame? There are easier and cheaper ways to obtain fame than studying art for three years and living on canned food until you start to make some kind of name for yourself. Even then such ‘fame’ only takes the pressure off a bit, it doesn’t exactly line your pockets. So why do young artists desire international careers? If it’s not money and it’s not fame then could it perhaps be idealism?
Young artists are incredible idealists. They need to be, to make such a bad career move, financially speaking. Yet this is just the point, you don’t make art because of money, not until you’re old and cynical anyway. No, you make art because it’s the right thing to do, it’s what EVERYBODY should be doing: freeing themselves from the shekels of the corporate-driven money machine, raising two fingers to the establishment and expressing themselves by making ‘Art’. Isn’t that how it is? Idealism sounds about right. Well, idealism with money and fame thrown in for good measure.
I am not knocking young artists. Idealism is a good thing: it means you have not thrown in the towel. For what it’s worth, you truly believe that you, as small and insignificant as you are, CAN make a difference to this sorry, tired world. The fact is, young artists do seem to think like this. Many of them are up to their neck in philosophical theories about politics, ecology, activism, in fact everything they imagine they should read in order to become responsible human beings, take charge and make a difference to this ever more turbulent world.
The good news is, for all those budding idealistic art activists with dreams of international art careers, fame and a little bit of money thrown in for good measure, that it’s getting cheaper to make a difference to this world all the time! Where once it was a rare occurrence for artists to cross their country’s borders and head off to foreign climes, it is now possible, thanks to Easyjet, FlyB, Jet2 and a whole barrage of budget flight providers, to be idealistic everywhere and anywhere you please, for the price of dinner in a good restaurant.
That’s not the only good news! Now, more than ever, there appears to be an abundance of people who are not only willing, but who actually want to listen to young idealists ranting on about any number of ‘political’ issues. However, I have a few problems with this, though not with the idealism, or the drive to understand and affect politics, all perfectly admirable and commendable. No, it is another aspect which bothers me.
You see, the more people travel around, one week in Belfast, the next in Budapest or Belgrade, the less time there is for them to have a political effect in any one place. Technology may be getting faster, but human nature is as old as the hills. If you want to alter society, which is the ultimate goal of most political art, then you have to realise that society is built on human nature. It will take a whole lot more than quirky art dressed in clever arguments to move an edifice that history has demonstrated to be so disobliging and, frankly, bloody-minded.
What is obvious to me, although probably difficult for a reader to stomach, is that most artists and advocates of art activism don’t recognise in themselves, as they sit through an evening of talks on political art, their inner teenager lapping up discussion, as though it was a ‘Rage Against the Machine’ record and they were sixteen again. To put it less metaphorically: people do not recognise that these cultural events, which act as platforms for social change, actually hamper change by providing an outlet for people’s aggression, channelling it into intellectual wrangling. People, in their fervour for social change, have replaced direct social action with unending and varied discussion about the nature of social change.
From this unending discussion a whole industry has sprang up: a globally networked, roving-revolutionary-talking-shop, comprised of galleries, universities, publishers, independent curators, cultural theorists and last, but not least, ideally-minded young artists bouncing through it all like so many ping-pong balls in a washing machine. All these things, working in unison like one well-oiled machine, produce books, exhibitions, conceptual models of the world and personalities, in the form of ‘artists’, for us to spend and invest our minds, energy and money. None of this really changes anything, and in fact it is all just one other cultural leisure industry, producing a pseudo-revolutionary hobby for the all too bored middle classes, those great exponents of armchair socialism.
What is one to do about all this? Well I don’t know about you, but I’m done with it all: IT’S MISERY. I’m going to stay home with my kid and go for walks in the park. I’m never writing another application for an exhibition as long as I live. I’m not getting on another plane to New York, London, Berlin or any other god(s)-forsaken misery hole of a city UNLESS it’s for non-art purposes. I’m done with hurtling around with the surplice crusaders. I’m going to stay home and enjoy myself. STAY HOME: MAKE ART. And what's more, I’m inviting you to join me.
www.spartaction.com
