LOCKDOWN JOURNAL : COVID-19.1 (BasementArtsProject)
Since the time of Plato the case has been put forward that in terms of social strata, the artist performs no useful function in society. Art is about imitation and therefore serves no practical purpose. Take for instance the example that Arthur C Danto makes in ‘What Art Is’ in which he says “Thus artists could draw a table, meaning that they knew how tables appear. But could they actually make a table? Not likely - but what good was the appearance of a table?”
In Douglas Adams’ book ‘The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy’, a race of people known as the Golgafrinchans banished a third of their population deemed useless to society, including their telephone sanitisers, and sent them to colonise a remote planet, which turns out to be Earth. Meanwhile back on their own planet the Golgafrinchans are wiped out by a virulent disease contracted through . . . you guessed it . . . unsanitary telephones.
Whilst in times of not just national but global emergency such as the present threat from COVID-19, we must be careful what we wish for. Whilst artists may not be the fourth emergency service, that apparently is ‘Just Eat’, we do occupy a place in whatever society emerges after such times of crisis. Although it may seem like we live in a heightened state of emergency all of the time due to matters of terrorism, climate change, deepening political divisions of all kinds, disease, war, famine etcetera, we must remember that our lives must also contain the things that make us happy, the things that suggest we are heading for brighter times, however futile it may seem in the moment. As Sting puts it in his song ‘All This Time’ “What good is a used up world and how can it be worth having?”
Reading a National Geographic article earlier this week which talked of fake news spreading about the re-wilding of areas from which nature had previously fled due to the impact of human activity: dolphins and swans in the canals of Venice, drunken elephants in Yunnan Province; China etc, I could not help but think that this may be the wrong time for such an article.
“These fake feel-good stories, [Erin] Vogel says, can make people even more distrustful at a time when everyone already feels vulnerable. Finding out good news isn’t real “can be even more demoralising than not hearing it at all.”
As this current crisis eclipses every other story in the news, with today’s exception about the Salmond not spawning upstream in Scotland in recent years, it would do us well to remember our most recent, and still ongoing, crisis before this one: Climate!
In a world were we try to imagine what post-capitalism might look like, an unintended consequence of shutting down large sections of industry has been a dramatic lowering of pollution levels in highly polluted areas. And this is not fake news but recorded as fact. Whilst we may set ourselves targets which we may never meet, if those targets are high then falling short still leaves us in a better position than we would have been had we not tried. It is important to set our sights high rather than looking at those below us and saying ‘well at least we are doing better than them’, because that way things can never improve.
Today a story was reported of Conservative MP Steve Double who suggested that the COVID-19 crisis had "taught us" that low-skilled workers "are actually pretty crucial to the smooth running of our country”. Of course this only comes as a lesson to those who have been busy denigrating and decimating our National Health Service for many years. We would do well to keep this in mind as we consider the role of everyone at the base of the pyramid that forms our current society. We must support our NHS, Teachers, Supermarket Workers and Cleaners so that they can help us survive the times of grave peril. Equally we must protect our Artists, Writers, Musicians, Academics and Entertainers to ensure that there is someone tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
And so over the coming weeks, whilst we are unable to continue with our real world projects, I am going to be handing the pages of our online Studio Journal over to artists.
As we all move indoors for a few weeks of enforced isolation it is important to make sure we do not lose our connection with those things that make us happy, give us hope and allow us to share something of what it is that makes us human; our enduring spirit of creativity. The intention is to ensure that we do not forget that other things exist at a time when that which is bad threatens to overwhelm what is good, and in doing so promote some of the artistic practice that we do not see in what can quite often be a very solitary occupation. Before every finished exhibition is a body of work that has been conceived, designed, worked on and finessed before it sees the light of day. This journal is open to all artists over the next few months. If you would like to talk about your practice, your life during lockdown, exhibitions and work forthcoming or just present some works of art then please feel free to submit it to Bruce Davies at basementartsproject@gmail.com
For details see below
LOCKDOWN JOURNAL CONCEPT
We [BasementArtsProject] want to make sure that artists have a visible presence on social media whilst they are unable to take part in real world projects.
BasementArtsProject has a large following on Social media channels with nearly 8.5k followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest combined. We also have an extensive mailing list and network what we do through Leeds Inspired, Visit Leeds and various other media outlets.
STUDIO JOURNAL is a facility for blogging on the BasementArtsProject website and is what we normally use for adding to information about exhibitions by allowing artists to write about themselves for this page. Every time a studio Journal page is published the details and links are. Circulated around the mailing list and social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest
LOCKDOWN JOURNAL will be a daily diary entry submitted by any artist who wishes to get involved in this online project. The idea will be to build up a picture of daily life in the independent art sector with a series of engaging posts building an online archive of daily activity for artists in the virtual world.
POSTS can include
Film (which will be uploaded to our YouTube channel and embedded in yr Journal Post)
Photographs
Artworks
Poetry
Text
Audio (which we will upload to the site via our SoundCloud channel)
BasementArtsProject will provide the first post for context
POSTS will be
Titled and Numbered in the following manner:
Lockdown Journal Covid-19.1 BasementArtsProject
Lockdown Journal Covid-19.2 [Artist / Organisation Name]
Lockdown Journal Covid-19.3 [Artist / Organisation Name]
Etc . . .
ARTISTS SUBMITTING WORK CAN
Provide their own title for the Journal entry
Use any and as many media as they feel appropriate for the post. (No word count - as long or short as possible)
Be as personal or as broad in subject matter as they want to
Posts can address any theme art, politics, life love and happiness but in terms of rules they must adhere to the guidelines as laid out in the BasementArtsProject Exhibition Planning Document (see footnote)
ARTISTS CAN SUBMIT ONE POST OR AS MANY POSTS AS THEY WANT
We will post all Studio Journal Entries so long as they abide by the following guideline:
BasementArtsProject will not entertain abusive, threatening language or behaviour such as online trolling in any circumstance.
Signing off with an appropriate post for #BasementFM which you can regularly find over on Twitter: John Cale’s Music For A New Society