SATURDAY SALON
It was today. Seven people came. That was a good number. Not too many to fit in my house but enough to debate. I wanted to try to present a range of ideas and information which would feed the debate about how we might live together in a society facing the prospect of prolonged or indefinite human life expectancy – a new Aeon.
Images right: Living Forever, FAME & Aubrey de Grey
Having got the important things sorted out (coffee, croissants, biscuits…) everyone seemed pleased, if slightly surprised, at my plan to start off by watching a bit of telly, and then perhaps a bit perplexed at my first choice of viewing – the clip from Fame where lots of people are dancing on car roofs to Irene Cara’s rendition of “I’m gonna live for ever”. I had thought this would make a good start and that the feelgood factor brought about by all of that youthful vitality would make everyone smile …
Video no.2 was the disconcertingly Messiah-like Aubrey de Grey outlining the “7 deadly things” which cause us to age and die, along with a couple of his theories about how to eliminate cancer and clean up the “cellular garbage that clogs up ageing body tissues”.
Switching off the tv, my 3rd offering was a reading of 3 pages from John Wyndham’s “Trouble With Lichen” in which two of the central characters discuss the conflicting agendas between The Individual and The Institution in a society considering the pros and cons of indefinite lifespan.
By now the Saloneers were warming up. Questions, anecdotes about changing models of living, frowns and worried looks were becoming evident. Time to tie it down a bit. Focus. What I really wanted the Saloneers to do, I said, was to form two groups representing The Individual and The Institution, and to begin to think about what would be the big issues for each group if they were at the forefront of a society facing these huge changes. What rights would The Individuals need to protect for themselves whilst The Institution was beginning to draw up rules that would govern the way society would function in a world where people might live forever?
ANOTHER PROJECT… ANOTHER PROPOSAL, AND A SATURDAY SALON
Alongside my Improbable Experiments With Growing Stones, my curatorial project for Phoenix Brighton continues to slowly take shape. Based around the question, “What difference would it make if we never died?”, the project will explore this question, looking at the historic quest for the elixir of life alongside the contemporary reality of scientific & medical “miracles”.
For a long time I’ve had it on my notional list of things to do, to apply for a retreat or residency at Wysing, but in the past the time has never been right – or I have never felt brave enough. Now though, I’ve decided, it is the time to do it, especially as the Retreat theme “How might we live together?” can be linked to issues raised by the notion of greatly extended or indefinite human life. As part of the application process I need to propose an hour long session which I would run as part of the retreat should I be selected.
This seems like a great opportunity to broaden out my thinking for this project and there is a lot to think about – greater minds than mine are needed! There are just 2 weeks left until the submission deadline so I’ve gone with an impulse and decided to dive in at the deep end to tap into the great Blue Monkey Network mind-bank. I’m going to host a “Saturday Salon” next weekend in order to work through some of my ideas for the research project and the Wysing proposal with some of the willing Blue Monkey membership (in return for a plentiful supply of coffee and biscuits at the very least of course – and maybe a little video treat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yDrLZTgs08 ).
PAGE 6, A PROPOSAL, A DAY IN THE STUDIO
After what seems like a very long period of planning, organising, proposal writing and generally doing all the boring stuff that hopefully sets everything up for the next few months (fingers crossed), I looked for my last blog entry today. By the time I’d read all the other interesting blogs on the way, that took a very long time too. Page 6 my blog was on. V bad. It’s been too long.
One of the good things I’ve been doing in the last couple of months is writing a proposal for an installation – yes, you guessed it, it’s Improbable Experiments With Growing Stones. Although I still haven’t actually succeeded in spotting any growth in my stones, the experiments are getting quite interesting. I’ve decided it’s time to bring them all together in one place – past & present experiments and their documentation, as an installation in a shed. It seems like a good idea because a shed is reasonably portable and I can create the special environment my stones need in it and take it to almost any location – is this the start of The Growing Stones Roadshow? Big ideas, early days…
Meanwhile, a lovely sunny day today meant that the best way to spend it was in my studio-shed at the bottom of my garden, finishing off my marathon winter drawing project – 63 pages of drawings into a book of surprisingly dark Nature Poems by William H Davies … Yeah, thanks studio-mate who suggested that it was a bit silly to do them all in one book cos nobody’s going to be able to afford to buy it so I should take all the pages out & sell them as individual drawings – I don’t think so… ; )
