Encouraging peasant families to kill and sell their eldest child for food, the 1729 essay A Modest Proposal suggested a satirical ‘solution’ to the ’Irish problem’ of abject poverty. Written by Irishman Jonathan Swift, it was aimed for (or at) the English establishment. The killing and eating of children would not only earn an income but was also a means of culling the exponential growth of the stereotypical Catholic Irish family. This, Swift claimed with deep seethed irony, was a means of the poor to work themselves out of poverty. This mimetic of a real solution highlighted just how pervasive the dystopian problem of poverty had become in 18th century Ireland.
In East London’s Chisenhale gallery, Irish artist Yuri Pattison (b.1986) presents his own a mimetic solution to a truly 21st century set of problems. Granted the Chisenhale Gallery Create Residency from 2014-2016, Pattison questions the utopian ideal of a community shared work/live space and the political implications of new and omnipresent technologies. The exhibition user, space, on display until August 28, asks whether a community-based live and work model has become a politically charged, capitalist endeavour. Has the so-called democracy of knowledge production now become a commodity where its control equals power?
In East London’s Chisenhale gallery, Irish artist Yuri Pattison (b.1986) presents his own a mimetic solution to a truly 21st century set of problems. Granted the Chisenhale Gallery Create Residency from 2014-2016, Pattison questions the utopian ideal of a community shared work/live space and the political implications of new and omnipresent technologies. The exhibition user, space, on display until August 28, asks whether a community-based live and work model has become a politically charged, capitalist endeavour. Has the so-called democracy of knowledge production now become a commodity where its control equals power?