Unart

Much of my artwork is constricted by a bulk of theory.  I keep mentioning the importance of creating art that can be seen as more than art so that more people can read into it and understand it.  Here's an extract from my theory writings, an explanation of what I term as 'Unart'.

Unart

Recently, I was asked what I considered to be the most successful piece of art I have ever encountered.  Although I have never witnessed it in the flesh, my response was a Jeremy Deller piece that featured on the London Underground.  I cannot remember its title, or the year in which it ran.  I know that it was only implemented on the Piccadilly Line.  The actual piece itself was a spoken artwork.  And I use the term ‘artwork’ very loosely.  The drivers of the Underground trains were given a book of (I think existentialist) philosophy, and they were told to scatter their daily tube announcements of “Mind the gap” and “Keep clear of the closing doors” with snippets of wisdom from this book.

I was asked where I’d read or heard about this ‘artwork’.  My answer was again a little uninformed, but I remembered reading a newspaper article by the comedian Arthur Smith as he spent a day as a tube driver’s assistant, helping them with the announcements from Jeremy Deller’s book of selected philosophy.  I also remember Arthur Smith writing that he’d read a piece over the train tannoy that dealt with ‘looking into the void’ (I think by Kant), then following this by announcing “Please mind the gap”.

This is perhaps my first recollection of hearing about what I term as ‘unart’.

In another discussion, my own practice was being scrutinised, and the flaws in my work bore down to associations with strategies (systems of operations and their methods) that I was trying to avoid (namely materialism and consumerism, but also elitist art).  To fight against a strategy, Michel De Certeau and John Berger advocate tactics: methods of resistance that don’t subvert, but instead oppose the strategy in question.  For example, when trying to form a piece that resists/opposes consumerism, it has to be without any consumer value or material worth, and without any of the glossy appeal that consumerism holds.  Therefore it cannot be a manipulated by consumerism, or hold any associations with consumerism.

But this conjured new challenges.  My problem was that the tactics I was using (making personal and individual artworks that were intimate and sometimes made the viewer uncomfortable) were being associated with a different system: activism.  And this association wrapped around my work and clouded it.

Back to Jeremy Deller’s London Underground philosophy.

Imagine that you were a philosopher sitting on a Piccadilly Line tube train.  And you heard a piece of Deller’s collected philosophy float out over the tannoy.  Would you associate this philosophical statement as being the work of a philosopher?

Or imagine that you were a poet sitting on a Piccadilly Line tube train.  And you heard a piece of Deller’s collected philosophy float out over the tannoy.  Would you associate this philosophical statement as being the work of a poet?

The success of Deller’s ‘artwork’ is that it can be considered as not being an artwork.  In short, it is unart.

The unart has dual importance.  Firstly, that it can be disassociated with its original intention.  In the case of Deller’s tube philosophy, it can be disassociated with being art.  Secondly, the unassociation can bridge new ground and form new links to other subjects.  The tube philosophy can be linked to philosophy, poetry, social activism, the individuality of the tube driver and therefore human nature, existentialism and back to art.

But there is another important aspect of unart: it can still be art.

Unart is therefore the most successful way of being a tactic (a method of opposition to a strategy).  Unart has the ability to be read as one of a number of classifications (was Deller’s piece art, philosophy, poetry or activism?), and these multi-layered connections break and weaken the links of association that surround the piece of unart.  In layman’s terms, unart can have a greater number of links to other subjects.  This means that the piece of unart loses any strong association with one subject in particular.  Also, it can be read and understood by more people because it can be seen as having more than one classification.

As a method for fighting against the systems that I oppose, unart is an ideal vehicle for implementing my theory.  It does not use tactics that are the tools of consumerism or mass media, it can sustain that handmade element and can become part of community and society based artwork, simply by its ability to be so widely read.