cross currents in culture variant number 43 spring 2012 free Kat Gollock The Filth, and the Fury Mark Pawson Comic & Zine Reviews Jorge Ribalta Towards a New Documentalism Emma Louise Briant If... On Martial Values and Britishness Tom Coles “Organise your mourning” Ellen Feiss Santiago Sierra... Ethics and the political efficacy of citationTom Jennings The Poverty of Imagination Rosemary Meade “Our country’s calling card”Joanne Laws Generation Bailout Friendofzanetti The Housing Monster 2 | variant 43 | spring 2012 Variant 43 Spring 2012 Variant engages in the Editorial Group contents examination and critique of The Filth, and the Fury editor/ administration: society and culture, drawing Leigh French Kat Gollock from knowledge across the 3 arts, social sciences and co-editors: humanities, as an approach to Gordon Asher Comic & Zine Reviews creative cultural practice and John Beagles as something distinct from Lisa Bradley Mark Pawson 7 promotional culture. Neil Gray It is an engagement of Gesa Helms practice which seeks to publicly Daniel Jewesbury Towards a New Documentalism participate in and understand Owen Logan Jorge Ribalta 10 culture ‘in the round’. That is, Advisory Group in the many and various ways Monika Vykoukal culture exemplifies, illuminates Simon Yuill If.... and engages with larger societal Kirsten Forkert On Martial Values and Britishness processes. 12 We contend it is constructive Design Kevin Hobbs Emma Louise Briant and essential to place articles which address the multiple ISSN: 09548815 facets of culture alongside ‘Organise your mourning’ Printers articles on issues that inform Spectator Newspapers, Bangor, Tom Coles or have consequences for 19 Co. Down, N. Ireland BT20 4AF the very production and subject of knowledge and its Contribute Ethics and the political efficacy of communication. Contributors’ guidelines are available on the Variant website. citation in the work of Santiago Sierra Variant is a constituted cultural 25 organisation that functions with Contact Ellen Feiss the assistance of public support, Variant donations, subscriptions and 1/2, 189b Maryhill Road, advertising. Glasgow, Scotland, UK G20 7XJ The Poverty of Imagination Opinions expressed in Variant t. +44 (0)141 333 9522 Tom Jennings e. [email protected] 28 are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the editors or Variant. All material www.variant.org.uk “Our country’s calling card” is copyright (unless stated Culture as the Brand in Recessionary Ireland otherwise) the authors or 33 Variant. Rosemary Meade Generation Bailout Art, Psycho-Geography, and ‘The Irish Mind’ debate 36 Joanne Laws The Housing Monster Variant needs Friendofzanetti 41 Cover your support! 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Contact Variant, 1/2 189b Maryhill Road, Glasgow, G20 7XJ Scotland, UK +44 (0)141 333 9522 [email protected] Cheques payable to ‘Variant’ Payment through PayPal to: [email protected] variant.org.uk variant 43 | spring 2012 | 3 The Filth, and the Fury Kat Gollock More than 60% of those charged in the 2011 medium in Britain. Community London riots were reported to be under the age of The Rear View photographers were proactive in twenty-four.1 This raises all too obvious questions By the 1970s many photographers had grown their response to the issues of about what society is offering young people in tired of the continual demands of a competitive the time and wrote prolifically terms of educational and social support. In the and commercially driven practice. The falsifying on the subjects of photography midst of a double-dip recession (if indeed we ever of truth and the empty stylisations of pseudo- theory, education reform, and left it), with government funding cuts affecting realism, as well as the emphatic use of stereotypes visual representation. Their work most areas of education, social and cultural – all predominantly for commercial gain – were provided the basis for these provision, the political debates of the 1970s have a becoming highly disputed. Some photographers expanded photographic debates renewed prominence in Britain. were prepared to sacrifice financial gain for a and appeared as a challenge 7 Although media and political reactions to the more fulfilling, socially useful practice. The to a disinterested aestheticism riots in England sparked discussions about the newly appointed photography department within within photography and in the underlying social and economic causes, it was the the Arts Council of Great Britain, created in arts more broadly. The surge of outpouring of rage in damage against property 1973, also meant that funding opportunities alternative press organisations that warranted the greatest media attention. were much more readily available. As the Arts also facilitated the publication Among those angered by the riots we can include Council encouraged practice at a grass roots of a great deal of this work and the broom wielding, riot clean-up gentrifiers who level, community orientated projects were set to helped to establish a national wanted to reclaim the “real London from those benefit the most. This guarantee of funding from a network of community art based who are scum”.2 Evidently, many of these people recognised government body allowed established workshops. relished wielding self-righteousness more than practitioners some emancipation from the highly Since the early 1900s, socially their brooms. Upping the mood of moral outrage commercialised work which had previously and politically progressive still further was the e-petition demanding that been one of the few avenues that offered most organisations had maintained looters, rioters, their flatmates and families3 photographers any form of financial support. an organisational relationship lose their homes. Clearly the second part of New Although they weren’t necessarily making money, with the printed press and self- Labour’s sanctimonious mantra “tough on crime, with government funding and a programme of in- publishing.14 Produced and tough on the causes of crime” never made an house fund-raising events, projects could generate distributed cheaply and easily, impression on this virtual constituency. enough income to sustain themselves and for photography, in this context, Such backlash to the civil unrest calls to mind some they provided the only viable alternative to was the fitting vehicle for the cautionary remark of a Parisian train driver unemployment. “It was a time of idealism; those dissemination of political ideas in 1995, quoted by French sociologist Pierre involved gave their time freely to a movement they by and for the working class – 8 Bourdieu. Following a terrorist attack on his thought exciting and important.” for the communist groupings, it train, the driver warned against any want to take was essential the proletariat, as revenge on the Algerian community. “‘They are’, he ‘the one revolutionary class’, be said, ‘simply people like us’.”4 Bourdieu elaborated reached in order to advance the on the driver’s point; “It is infinitely easier to take necessary political uprising.15 up a position of for or against an idea, a value, a Leap forward more than half person, an institution or a situation than it is to a century of political agitation analyse what it truly is, in all its complexity.”5 – including achievements of The question has to be asked, had the mass women’s suffrage and the of young people who rioted in London had a ‘end of Empire’ – during the more ‘affirmative’ political message would they 1970s marginalised groups be viewed by UK politicians and media with continued to use ephemeral the same esteem they profess to hold for the material to ensure widespread recent uprisings across the Middle East? Is it availability of their work really merely a supposed lack of a clear political and garner mass support for objective that has made the London and other their causes. The start of the riots so objectionable? After all, what could be The majority of the practitioners involved with decade saw the publication clearer than ‘Not This!’, in all their multiple, these new community projects were, perhaps of the first issue ofSuburban 9 overlapping contexts? Beatrix Campbell’s 1993 obviously at the time , politically and socially Press, an anarchistic political book Goliath, which looks at the 1991 and 1992 ‘left-leaning’. Continual reference to the work magazine, and continued 10 suburban riots in England, attests to their of the Mass Observation movement , The Film with influential ‘minority’ 11 disavowal, thus: and Photo League , and Worker-Photography publications such as Spare Rib 12 Movement in contemporary and subsequent and Gay News. Publications like “These extravagant events were an enigma. They made journals and exhibitions outlined how important