Art as it should be

Originally uploaded by TSHolen

Yesterday I attended the most enjoyable art and design history lecture this far in my life (with the probable possibility that I will feel the same way at eighty-something). Well, this guy (Space Hijackers agent Bristly Pioneer apparently) came along to give a lecture about his anarchistic protest organisation called the Space Hijackers (S.H.). He was there representing something like an activist branch of performance art. Other big players are Joey Skaggs and Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping. Both also doing some hilarious stuff.

The general idea is to fuck around with the capitalists and the authority as much as possible without getting a serious offence for it. The best way to do this, as agent Bristly Pioneer (who've only been arrested once in the ten years he's been doing it) says, is to only do things that have such a great element of humour in them that Bobby will either look stupid trying to stop you, or (even cleverer) he will only join in on the action if he tries to stop.

One thing they usually do is that they go to bars dressed in proper cricket clothing, get mashed and start challenging businessmen to a cricket match. Capitalists against anarchists. Anyways, police turn up trying to think of a good idea of how to suggest that playing a cricket match in the middle of a street in London at 2 in the morning differs slightly from what they think is cool. The funny thing about it (and what I believe S.H. really is trying to produce from this situation), is that the £500-a-suit-clad businessmen is fighting alongside self pronounced anarchists against the police. Apparently some of them pointed up to enormous flats in skyscrapers above saying things like:
"I live/work up there, why (the fuck) shouldn't I be allowed to play a little cricket down here?"

Apparently they meet once a month to organise stuff like this. They check that no one's undercover cops (specifically coloured underwear), get pissed and come up with ideas. There's a big arms fair every second year in London that is rather unknown for people outside the industry. S.H. however, are very much aware of its existence. Once they figured that all that fascination about guns and weapons were compensations for their own personal (sexual) shortcomings, and bought a shitload of dildos (funded by some art benefit thingy), went on the DLR (public transport) where everyone going to the faire was, and tried selling them. Apparently, neither them nor the police thought this was a very right thing to do. The year before they got hold of a similar load of prosthesis' only to be able to go down and sell arms at an arms faire.

Before this year's faire they had a meeting and someone proposed they should get a tank. This was considered a laughing matter, that is, until sufficient amounts of alcohol were consumed. So they decided they'd do that. The idea was to sell it at the faire to whoever wanted it. They needed to raise £5000 to get hold of one, and did this by selling tshirts and having fundraiser parties. After some hard work they had the tank. So, what to do with it before the faire..? By this time, the police had gotten properly interested in what they were doing. So they had to hide the tank, in the middle of London. As easy as it may sound, they did have some trouble hiding the tank. The vehicle that brought the tank couldn't make the 'sharp' turn at the end, so they had to take it of. During this, I can imagine, rather stressing situation, two police officers just happens to stumble upon a load of people trying to get a tank of a trailer. Rather shocked they were. They froze the situation, and started taking pictures of themselves posing in front of the tank, making phone calls like:

"Eh, sir, we stumbled upon a tank"
"...."
"yes sir, a tank"
"..."
"In the middle of Hackney, sir"
...

They got away because all their papers were in order. Back in the days when agent Briskly Pioneer got his driving license, they weren't too specific about types of vehicles and all that stuff, meaning that he could actually drive the tank. Also they conveniently managed to insure it as a minibus (!). But after that they pretty much had police on them everywhere they went. They wanted to move the tank once and made phone calls to arrange it, and all of a sudden retroreflectors and neon yellow was everywhere in the middle of the night, making them conclude that their phones were being listened to. They had loads of fun with this, making phone calls about moving the tank just to have a laugh at the police rushing to the scene.

On the day of the fair they tried to get the tank out, only to be met by a wall of police. They performed a silly demonstrative check of the tank to decide whether it was eligible for travelling on public roads, just to stall time. When it became obvious that they weren't going to be able to get going from there, our friend agent Bristly Pioneer got up on top of the tank with a megaphone to address the crowd that had gathered:

"I'm sorry to say that we're not going to be able to get the tank to the faire. The police simply won't let us. I'm terrible sorry to disappoint everyone that came to see this.

However, the REAL tank is already on its way to the faire..."

He produced a picture of the second, secret tank closing in on the faire, while telling that they got a bicycle charity to give them loads of bicycles so that everyone that wanted to go down to the faire could grab one. The police, proudly having made a blockade of some sort, didn't have a chance to get moving that fast. And again phone calls were being made (hopefully not by the same people):

"Sir, there's another tank"
"..."
"Yes sir, but there was one more"
"..."
"Yes sir, this one was a decoy, the other just crossed the bridge..."
...

The tank arrived and was auctioned with bids starting on an Ipod. Mission accomplished.

I took the liberty to fill in some of the things I didn't remember properly, if someone else attending the lecture notices something I've got wrong, please let me know. I also just realised that a more complete and better version of the story is at the Space Hijackers home page. Anyways, my conclusion is that as far as ART goes, this is probably about the coolest thing you could to.

The following evening, we decided to go out. Matt, Sophie, Trude (actually made it this time), Dan and late but trusty Michelle and Claire, and yeah, I was there as well. We started out at Lloyds, ordering pitchers of liquid hell (vodka+mixers) which went down rather rapidly. Drinking games as usual. Afterwards followed a totally bitching night at the local night club Oceana, during which I spent more money on alcohol than I have at my whole stay prior to this. Apparently I managed to down 6 or 7 shots of teq and some awful (but cheap) jack and coke on top of the jugs from Lloyds. Didn't even get sick. Probably the dancing. Maniac-like dancing. Dan was the star.

Though day today, although all of us were proud and ready for lecture in the morning. Rather impressive in my opinion, actually a better turnout than normal (good job Dan!). Mental presence maybe not as strong as some of us had a tendency to doze of at times. 2'oclocko and time for my presentation (prepared the last 30 minutes before 2) and seeing as no one else of the presenters turned up (one almost believably ill and the other claiming to have fainted earlier in the morning. Wow, GOOD imagination!) my pictures were the topic for the whole hour. Vince told me to look at photographer Brian Griffin, who besides having a rather strikingly recognisable name, produces some whopping good pictures. Apparently he didn't get a job after he'd finished his MA in photography. After a while he just took a (rather unattractive) job as a staff photographer in some business magazine. Seeing as they had hired him and was paying him they very well had to use his pictures. He discovered he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and they had to publish it. This ended with a photograph published in a business magazine winning loads of prizes. Pretty awesome.

Memorable quotes from today:
"...then maybe I can stick my stick in your thing...?"
(Frankie asking whether she could use my mac to present if she didn't get hers before she had to present. The stick in question is type: memory- )

"Hunter S. Thompson is a fucking genius! People watch the movie (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and think it's funny. I've read the book and it's fucking scary! That guy talks about drugs that _I_ have never heard of in my life before, and I funded art school by dealing drugs at the university for fucks sake!"
(Vince after I brought up the topic of Hunter S. Thompson as a photographer)

Upon being asked what would be a fail on the art and design history essay, our tutor suggested:
"Well, if you shit on a piece of paper and hand it over to me..."

The funny thing about this (as Sophie pointed out) was that you could actually tell that about three seconds after he'd said that, he got the mental picture in his head and started making faces, as he realized what he'd just said. Good stuff !

I'm going to bed in two hours ago. Never seem to get that stuff right, it's simply too easy to stay up.