- Venue
- Camberwell College of Art
- Location
- London
The two events discussed here – 'Social Change/Contemporary Art' and 'Peckham TV' – were organised by Peckham Space. Both events fell under the banner Peckham TV, and were connected: the first representing, I guess, the political theory, and the second the action. So maybe in a sense they were one event. The first, Social Change/Contemporary Art: a Public Talk, (19 June, Wilson Road Lecture Hall, Camberwell) was an open discussion, with, on the panel: representatives from the Demos think tank, artist Harold Offeh and representatives of group ‘The People Speak.’ I’m quite confused about all these groups. The second was Peckham TV: a Public Event (21 June, Peckham Square).
One thing I liked about both events was that there was no pretence that they were art. The question of what is or is not art was of no interest at all to the organisers or to anyone there. The focus seemed genuinely to be on how you can help people. If there was some naivety mixed in with some expertise and knowingness, that’s the nature of the beast.‘Art’s relationship to politics is seen in two ways,’ says Samuel Jones of Demos. ‘People think art is stifled by the connection of politics. And politicians are suspicious of art because they think it’s soft.’Demos are younger than I had imagined. They say they were independent, not affiliated to a party, and an ‘educational charity founded in 1993; a means of challenging a political world dominated by Westminster.’ The cynic in me thinks that this is a decoy organisation, on the old principle: let the people protest as much as they like, and then do whatever you want. However, I have to say, this evening – thanks to both panel and audience – is really great.
Saul Albert of The People Speak says, ‘we do participatory art in public space’. I’ve always been curious about ‘public space’. What and where is it exactly? The tube? I learned that Hannah Arendt, in about 1958, wrote that there was no longer a ‘public sphere’.And I always thought Auden must be right when he said that poetry had no effect on people or politics but lived merely ‘in the valley of its saying.’ Then I saw Stephen Spender speak at the poetry society: he took this up and said, actually what we wrote did indeed have a political effect, and so did Auden’s own writing.Albert: ‘Question. Is social change possible through contemporary art?’ Then he says ‘the more answers you come up with the harder it is to remember the question.’ This endears me to him.Then he talks about voting. ‘To avoid paralysis’ he says, ‘one can add a third option. This can let you change the rules of the question.’ The third option is represented by a card which reads: ‘Ask a better question. Yes/No.’‘Could culture be an alternative way to vote?’ he asks. I want to say no, but perhaps if it was expressed differently I might be more in tune with the idea. I can’t stop thinking of Berthold Brecht.
Then there’s a really scary discussion, much of it from the audience, about ‘voting with your remote control’, voting with your feet, or as consumers.’ The vision that a person in a sweet shop is voting is presented.Did Thatcher turn the minds of a nation to blancmange? But then an audience member points out that one should distinguish between ‘voting’, and enfranchisement. ‘Giving someone a leisure choice is not enfranchisement. Leisure choices are not significant.’ I breathe a sigh of relief. Sam of Demos agrees. ‘How do you re-connect with people representing us in parliament?’ I don’t know.Someone mentions Komar and Melamid, which is an interesting aside. It all leads to ‘we have no choice, we are in the hands of capitalism’ (an audience member.) I think of Adam Curtis’s ‘The Trap’, and his idea that the government has sold itself to big business.‘But art can educate,’ Which I guess I must believe.Another audience member mentions Spider Man: ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ Isn’t the point that we don’t have great power, not that we do? But her optimism is arguably better than my pessimism.Emily Druiff (Peckham Space) speaks of ‘token democracy’ – one could say she’s only doing a job here after all – ‘but I hope some kind of engagement will have some kind of effect’. This sums it up. Do something.
Another audience member goes back to an earlier point. ‘The Bow young people’s public collage didn’t take place because, you said, “you didn’t involve the funders.” The fact is it didn’t happen because the funders vetoed it. Isn’t this replicating the illusion of democracy – do we just strengthen the structures we are playing with? How do we stop doing that? And so on. It was good.
Peckham TV live EventThe event in Peckham Square – the area outside the library – was also good. If odd. It opened with a speech by Russell Profitt of Peckham Council. I liked him.Ostensibly, the aim was to dream up an advertisement for Peckham, with whoever came along from the general public, and with the help of a team of artists and socially committed types. There were also large interactive screens, and a game show format, with a compere.I won’t dwell on the details of the format. The issues discussed – raised by the audience in this open air speakeasy – include the police, CCTV, William Blake’s Angel of Peckham, pedestrianisation, water features, local shops, local museums, Brixton, how the old and the young share ideas in Africa, green things, cosmopolitanism, and much more.
But somehow the content, these issues, isn’t so much the point. The fact of people getting their teeth into something is.On the face of it, it might all seem a little misguided, but in the fact of the thing one can see a logic to the method, and it pretty much works: people do join in, do say things, some smart, some a bit quaint, and the fact of an apparently random collection of people engaging with the problems of Peckham and their possible solutions slowly and to my cynical mind rather magically unfolds. Nothing grand is achieved, but that’s why the TV game show format is seen, after all, to work: it’s a known quantity, everyone understands that that is the idea, and its flipness swallows the quaintness and the smartness and mixes it in a way that puts no one on the spot. The compere, Mikey the Mike, is untiring, engaging, and professional. The technology works, almost all of the time, and my impression at least is that the whole thing is seen by everyone as a worthy first attempt at something that might lead on to something else. At least someone is doing something, and cynical as one might be, it’s as well to respect this.It’s not embarrassing, and it’s not touching exactly, which is also good. It’s a little effort by everyone to try and make life better. We’ll see.
