We build our own Utopias

A good friend of mine Alastair Wight sent me the link to the above video. I like that the film could be a parody and even is a parody inasmuch that once we start searching for meaning and context in the art world we find it. There are always connections to be made however spurious they may seem. The idea of subconscious art is hilarious, it is the absolute of the critic, I wonder if Joseph Beuys would agree? I mean, if we're all artists right?

I was at a music festival at the weekend and we were promised "art installations" - everyone is at it now... installing art, doing the place up, making it all a bit MAD!!! As is often the case the reality of the project perhaps fell somewhat short of the intention. Kelburn Castle (as you can see by following the link above) is home to one of the most exciting graffiti commissions I've ever seen - the scale of ambition by Os Gemeos and the Marquis of Glasgow was exemplary. It's a model for Estates everywhere. However, what the festival itself provided was a little less pervasive or iconic in terms of artwork... unless... we look at the festival as an opportunity to instigate some kind of Relational Aesthetic. Admittedly, in the field of Socially Engaged Artwork practitioners often seek to give voice to people who have neither the apparatus nor often the indoctrinated vocabulary to express or give evidence of their situation, in other words, to make poinient what is taking place but in the arena of the "music festival" this element of giving aid may not be so integral. I believe it is the apparatus, the tools and the skills of artists working with "relational aesthetics" or concerned with social engagement, participation and inclusiveness that would prove to be invaluable to a music festival wanting to include Art in the scope of it's cultural output.
Festival goers subconsciously or explicitly create mini utopia societies. Once through the door the economic environment is based on barter, interstice or potlach, much of the trappings of modern day life become secondary to essentials like food and drink. Social barriers are blurred and collective endeavors are undertaken. If there was someway to survey this activity and present it, a manner in which to personify or manifest, even distill this perhaps a meaningful rather than indulgent or subjective body could be formed. I'm not an anthropologist nor have I studied sociology but what I do know is that as an artist it is nigh on impossible to make a meaningful art work out of a party. One can focus on the spectacle and approach the metier of Assume Vivid Astro Focus:



or broach the Fluxus like production of the band Found but when using the festival as one's canvas one has to accept that much of ones audience may be reaching for some kind of release rather than a cerebral intervention. Is it possible to give people that and still achieve some modicum of critical artistic merit? Burning Man might be the answer it's certainly the model many festival creators look to.

In a couple of weeks I'm off to the Venice Biennale to check out Danial Birnbaums curation of this years festival. He has operated under the slogan, subject, tag-line of "Making Worlds" suggesting that this is what Art is for - we create new possibilities and ideas of how to live, how we can live. I will be blogging on this further and I also hope to develop bring some cohesion to my idea of a Relational/Socially Engaged Utopiafest.