Leonardo_36-5_339-422 9/18/03 10:25 AM Page 375 G C ARTIST’S ARTICLE L R O O B S A S L I Uncomfortable Proximity: The Tate N G Invites Mongrel to Hack the Tate’s S Own Web Site Graham Harwood with a Commentary ABSTRACT by Matthew Fuller Uncomfortable Proximity is a critical web hack of the Tate Gallery’s web site, created by Graham Harwood, a member of the Mongrel collective. Commis- hen asked by Matthew Gansallo of the Tate The Tate’s scrapbook of British W sioned by Tate National Pro- Gallery (London) [1] to create the on-line project Uncom- pictorial history has many missing grammes, it mirrors the Tate’s fortable Proximity—a critical web hack of the Tate Gallery’s own pages, either torn out through re- own web site, but offers new site, drawn from the perspective of one of the prisoners buried vision or self-censored before the images and ideas, collaged from beneath the floor of the building—I found myself awkwardly first sketch. Those pages that sur- Harwood’s own experiences, his readings of Tate works and situated by my admiration for parts of the Tate collection and vived created the cultural cosmetics publicity materials and his my equal disdain for the social values that framed the creation of people profiting from slavery, mi- interest in the Tate Britain site. A of much of its art and of the collection itself. I felt nervous grant labor, colonization and trans- related critical text by Matthew about having to produce an on-line work from scratch in a portation. Clearly the images in the Fuller provides wider cultural context. month, and about tinkering with the bric-a-brac of the colo- historic collection and the image of nial masters in the U.K. It’s easy to wave a bit of shit on a stick the Tate itself are marked by the and carry it up the stairs until someone sniffs it. But there is past’s cultural cosmetic surgery, little or no point to this strategy, other than self-gain and no- made ready for the shoppers of the future. The skin of these toriety, which I find of little interest. I hoped the Tate would paintings is stretched over a psychological frame, a shield embrace this work as a legitimate counterpoint to some of its against which are thrown the filthy, diseased, rotting corpses own agendas and maintain the momentum for the glasnost of of daily life, profit and excess. The scrapbook’s excised pages the collection. will never be found, but their absence articulates the political Creating this web site forced me into an uncomfortable and economic relations of that society and of ours. While the proximity with the economic and social elites’ use of aesthet- Tate can never be fully inclusive of peoples’ histories that may ics in their ascendancy to power, and forced me as well to as- have run counter to its own, it can at least be a site of critical sess what this means for my own work on the Internet. I was participation in the present history of the cultural cosmetics delighted, of course, with the creative power and imagination of these islands. of the artists represented in the collection, enjoying the in- From adolescence I had visited the Tate, read the art books formation contained in the works, whether that be the aes- and generally pulled a forelock in the direction of the cult of thetic formalism, mathematical structures of perception, raw genius, on cue relegating my own creativity to the Victorian emotion, opto-chemical reactions of light across time or the image of the rabid dog. We know well enough that this was social history they contain. But when I stepped out of the tem- ple and smelled the filth of the Thames, overshadowed by the Tate, I was reminded that, down there—in the silt, under the Fig. 1. Turner, Mud Slime from the Thames and Scabs, 1840–2000, stones, beneath the floor—lay the true costs of such a delight. digital image, 2000. (© Graham Harwood) The tragedy of any social elite’s possession of public creativity and imagination has led me to try and trace at least two threads of this elite’s ascendancy in present history. The first involves mapping the rituals of tastefulness: the distance it creates from the uninspired Victorian mob, the language and manners of the tasteful, and the inherent hypocrisy that this implies. The second centers on the histories of different people: my friends and family, either ascendant, static or uncounted, who recog- nize themselves in terms of that tastefulness, or in reaction to it, and act accordingly. Graham Harwood (artist), Society for Old and New Media, DeWaag, Nieuwmarket 4, 1012, CR Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Web: <http://www.mongrelx.org>. Matthew Fuller (educator, writer), 49 Sherwin House, Kennington Road, London, SE11 5SB, U.K. E-mail: <[email protected]>. © 2003 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 36, No. 5, pp. 375–380, 2003 375 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409403771048173 by guest on 29 September 2021 Leonardo_36-5_339-422 9/18/03 10:25 AM Page 376 G C L R O O how it was supposed to be. The historical 1779 the government introduced an act Convicts were stripped, shaven and sen- B S literature on “rational recreations” states that created a new form of hard labor for tenced to penal servitude—not impris- A S L I that, in reforming opinion, museums prisoners in the hulks. It commenced onment—and spent the first 9 months of N G were envisaged as a means of exposing with the dredging of the river Thames— their sentences in solitary confinement. S the working classes to the improving a profitable precursor to expanding Before the birth of the prisons, punish- mental influence of middle-class culture. trade with the colonies—and made pro- ment was an open display of power: I was being inoculated for the cultural vision for building Millbank Penitentiary, public executions, floggings, disembow- health of the nation. among other things. elments, etc. The worry of the time was I have tried in the images accompany- The penitentiary was the largest in Eu- that such overt displays had become a ing this text to play with the broken links rope. It became the 19th-century cesspit source of contention to the mob, and pub- within the Tate’s web site, grafting on the for containing the rowdiest of the politi- lic order was threatened in various ways. skins of people who are close to me, drag- cal mob. Henry James, who visited the Parliament, therefore, removed punish- ging parts of the collection through the prison in 1884, made use of his visit in his ment from the public gaze and shunted it mud of the Thames, and infecting some novel The Princess Casamassina (1886), in into prisons. Middle-class society increas- of it with a relevant disease (Fig. 1). which he has Miss Pynsent describe the ingly condemned the poor as products of Tate Britain stands on the site of the for- brown, bare, windowless walls, ugly, trun- their own low and immoral natures and, mer Millbank Penitentiary, incorporating cated pinnacles and a character un- in 1834, the Poor Law was introduced, in part of the prison within its own structure. speakably sad and stern. It looked very which Disraeli announced to the world Many of the inmates’ bodies remain ce- sinister and wicked, to Miss Pynsent’s “that in England poverty is a crime.” Other eyes, and she wondered why a prison mented into the foundations of the build- should have such an evil air if it was comments of the time condemned the ing. The drains that run from the building erected in the interest of justice and poor as a vast heap of social refuse, the to the Thames, a stone’s throw away, bleed order . it threw a blight on the face of “mere human street-sweepings” who this decay into the silt of the river. the day, making the river seem foul and “serve as manure to the future crime-crop By 1776, transportation to the New poisonous [2]. of the country.” The main view of the as- World had been interrupted by the As with today, there was considerable cendant middle class was that the poor ex- American War of Independence, and old delay in government building programs. isted beyond the farthest reaches of sailing ships known as hulks were Transportation to Australia, made pos- civilized, art-loving society and were an in- dragged up the Thames and stuffed with sible in 1787, began to relieve the pressure dolent, ignorant, degraded, criminalized up to 70,000 prisoners. This practice was on the stinking hulks. It was not until 1817 sub-race. These views were structured into an “expedient” that lasted until 1859. In that Millbank Penitentiary finally opened. science by, among others, John Beddoe, a future president of the Anthropological Fig. 2. Mervin and Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon Coming On: After Institute. Turner 1840–2000, digital image, 2000. (© Graham Harwood) A racial or quasi-racial view of the poor was not the only view of the time. Liber- als, believing in the “leveling-up” theory (that the laborer would emulate the ar- tisan), dwelt upon the possibility of teach- ing even the lowest the virtues and satisfactions of self-help. The liberal elite of the mid- and late 19th century put their faith in the new persuasive power of museums, among other things such as schools and public parks.