I’m pretty sure that if doctors started prescribing New York based radio show This American Life to depressed patients, they’d see some good results. I’ve become an avid listener since I rocked up in the big smoke, mainly because the shows are so good at making you feel like part of a conversation. Its great for alleviating loneliness, putting things into perspective and offering up some fascinating chat on a load of random topics.
Not that I am lonely as such, but of course big cities can be alienating and I am still finding my feet. Yesterday was my one month anniversary in my new city and I’m pretty amused that the babbling of a US radio show feels like my soundtrack to life here so far. I listened to a show about relationship break ups yesterday and it really got me thinking about people I’ve left behind in other cites I’ve lived in so far in my life.
But the jewel in the crown of my listening so far has to be The Psychopath Test, part narrated by the awesome Jon Ronson. The show essentially begs the question; how do you tell if someone is a psychopath? And points out the massive ambiguities that can arise when you attempt to give psychological disorders a fixed definition. One of points made to this effect is that often CEOs of big corporate organisations have all of the traits of full on psychopathy….. and based on my time spent working in large arts organisations I have to say I can totally believe it! Character traits included lack of empathy, manipulation, intelligence and grandiosity. Isn’t it interesting to think that the measure by which you possess these qualities could push you either to be highly successful or totally and utterly bonkers?
I’ve finally arrived in London after about three years of trying to move here! Isn’t that wonderful? I’m starting my MRes at The London Consortium in October, which means that I have about seven weeks to find my feet in my new city. This feels like an excellent time to reflect, regroup and….. eh….. explore the boozers of Central London!
At intervals between pub visits I’ve had my eyes down and my laptop out. I’ve scored a freelance contract working for the AND Festival on a project with New York based artist Brody Condon, which relates fantastically well to my Mres research topic.
Level Five is a participatory performance focused on critically exploring group therapy seminars from the 1970′s, using live role playing techniques. We are inviting artists, performers and members of the public to participate in a physically and psychologically intense day-long event that will loosely follow the structure of early Large Group Awareness Trainings, using long form improv techniques influenced by progressive Nordic live role-playing and performative group therapy. The performance will be recorded and broadcast live to a public audience outside of the performance space and will also be edited into a film to be exhibited at FACT later in the year.
Brody’s main motivation for exploring these historical gatherings is to examine their ideological legacy and its influence on contemporary culture. Much of their rhetoric is still evident in the pop-psychology and self help culture of today. Speaking as somebody who has done a lot of one-on-one psychotherapy, its fascinating to see how these seminars simplified and commercialized therapeutic thinking.
In the documentary Century of the Self Adam Curtis says that:
“The trainings became hugely successful… But in the process, the political idea that had begun the movement for personal transformation began to disappear. The original vision… had been that through discovering the self a new culture would be born, one that would challenge the power of the state. What was now emerging was the idea that people could be happy, simply within themselves. And that changing society was irrelevant.”
I’m the first port of call for anyone who’s interested in getting involved, so for more info please drop me a line on [email protected] Brody is also in the UK next week and will be giving a talk about the project at Forest Gallery Edinburgh and at FACT in Liverpool. Let me know if you would like to come along!
Level Five documentation Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
I’m fascinated and somewhat infuriated by this article in the Guardian. An author who calls himself an ‘academic’ writing under a pseudonym (irritating in itself) has railed against internet dating, arguing that it is turning falling in love into a process of calculation.
The implication seems to be that technology instrumentalises the process of falling in love. I’ve actually posted a comment which counters this by suggesting that love and sexuality were instrumentalised by the media well before the invention of the internet. I’m imagining that I will be drowned out by the male academic infighting that seems to be the order of the day. None the less here is what I wrote:
This article is not about internet dating, its about how the media impacts on society and the choices that people make. Global capitalism and the language of advertising do encourage homogenisation and create rigid stereotypes about what individuals should expect to find attractive. But love became a sale-able commodity way before the internet was invented: on TV, in the press and in bars where people go to pick up easy sex. The net is just another tool for making money out of the human desire to be loved.
While McLuhan may have been been on to something when he said that ‘the medium is the message,’ I don’t think he was asking us to consider each medium individually, but to think more holistically about the entire spectrum of communication. To blame the commodification of love on the internet suggests ignorance of the wider society we live in.
Apparently Google is now ‘a replacement for the ancient human faculty of memory,’ according to an article I have just spied in the Guardian. I love this kind of speculation that technology changes the shape and connections in the human brain. Although I am not totally sure that I can believe the articles thesis that Google is teaching us to remember information in new ways.
For example; I have kept a huge filing cabinet of info on interesting exhibitions and articles that I have enjoyed for the past five years or so. I take great pleasure in the alphabetical filing system I have created for cataloguing the info, it allows me to indulge my inner secretary! I am not sure why this process is any different to something like online bookmarking or search engines, both things seem like similar approaches to information retrieval. One is an old system and one is new and dependent on a technological engine.
Principal researcher Betsey Sparrow (beautiful name) says that internet has become “an external memory source that we can access at any time.” The article says that this makes the internet an “arena where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.” It does then move on to say that this is very similar to the “collective memory” that we rely upon among our family, colleagues and friends. So in essence if we are already primed to remember information that is outside of ourselves, why does the technological or mediated extension of this process amount to – so the article seems to suggest- a fundamental change in how our brain works?
Yesterday I struggled to get any work done as I tuned in to a live stream project called Purge by performance artist Brian Lobel
I’ve always found artists live stream projects to be particularly compelling, there is something about seeing a real time relay that I find fascinating. Historically I’ve loved Coco Fusco’s early live stream work because rather than just being a live broadcast of a piece of performance art, its also a work about the nature of surveillance, so the form suits the content.
And its the same with Purge, which is a live broadcast of Brian going through all of his 1000+ facebook friends and then asking a panel of judges if he should keep them or delete them. Admittedly quite a banal idea, the process actually becomes totally compelling when you hear the artist tell indiscreet little stories about people from his past, or give his honest, vaguely formed opinions of people that he admittedly doesn’t even know so well. Naturally as a viewer and facebook friend of Brian I feel compelled to keep observing and know if the judges will think me worthy enough for Brian to retain my friendship.
And its this narcissism of watching that is the most intelligent aspect of the project. Social networks such as facebook thrive on the users wish to to create a particular public persona or to somehow perform the self.
The project is also a really compelling reply to some of the writing I’ve done on here about the notion of intimacy in online relationships. Its clear from Brain’s process that some of his facebook ‘friends’ represent deep and intimate connections of which social networks are a valued part. Other so called facebook ‘friends’ amount to only a vague acquaintance of people to whom he is totally indifferent.
I’ve met Brian once and added him perhaps out of ‘professional curiosity’ after he applied to participate in performance platform I was helping to curate with a proposal that would have seen him pretending to masturbate in the gents toilets of the arts venue. We turned the piece down… I wonder if he remembers and will see this as a necessary justification for deletion!
Its online during the day until Sunday 10th July and you can watch the live stream here
