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?
The immersive hybrid live/work-space-cum-exhibition sits uncomfortably between an industrial factory and an idealised working environment – capitalist and utopian ideologies grinding side by side. Influenced by East London’s Tech City – a digital business designed to foster digital businesses – the artist investigates the ubiquitous nature of new technologies and their pull on every aspect of contemporary western culture.
Grounding the display, a centrally located 40-foot Perspex table is surrounded by transparent Eames DSR style replica chairs – the majority of which still have their factory plastic wrappers intact. Initially produced in the 1950s and seen as the height of good taste, China’s mass production of replica Eames has tainted their status and turned it into a kitschy hangover of early postmodernist design. Their patents no longer monopolised, their capital no longer under individual control. Imbedded into and around this communal table are monitor screens displaying a combination of real time and recorded footage. Large, looming industrial shelving units are filled with uniform plastic boxes and wires where pumps and filters diligently preform unknown tasks while mp3 players emit ‘ambient’ white noise.
Every aspect of this space is carefully and fastidiously controlled by Big Brother – or Pattison himself in this instance. The digital screens, the white noise and the light system: a combination of LED and natural light rigged as an accelerated loop of a traditional working day, are manned from an offsite master server – one cannot help wonder how close Orwell really may have been in 1984 where knowledge truly was power.
Individual sculptures of industrial style shelving and digital equipment were initially installed across East London. They functioned as ‘lobby art’ in Campus London, a space for digital start-ups, Second Home, a shared work environment and Hackspace where Pattison himself used as his workspace during his 18-month residency. One such opportunistic sculpture used the ‘free’ means at its disposal in Second Home, mainly the electricity granted by its location. Pattison turned this energy into the production of Bitcoin royalties – peer-to-peer digital currency that ironically needs fossil fuels to be produced. These sculptures explore the exchange value attributed to a work of art, the absurd dichotomy between the world of art as a social intervention and art as a commodity.
Pattison exhibition initially seems to be a utopian, idealised space for a community to converge and share knowledge - free Wi-Fi included. The plastic however still covers the fake Eames, we cannot sit down. How do we turn electricity into cold hard cash? The early gift economy of the World Wide Web quickly and irrevocably became commercialised in the 1980s, utopian ideals subsumed into profit. Many shared live/work spaces are run for profit, not the community they purport to serve. The dissemination, control and consumption of knowledge within them is acutely seen as the result of a neo-liberal, deregulated society. User, Space is not a space to share, the art is for sale, knowledge will cost you.
Cannibalism aside, Swift and Pattison’s dystopian world share many similarities – they highlight the darkness of their present. Seen through the LED lights of now, these mimetic solutions serve to illustrate just how far we are from the utopian dream.
Grounding the display, a centrally located 40-foot Perspex table is surrounded by transparent Eames DSR style replica chairs – the majority of which still have their factory plastic wrappers intact. Initially produced in the 1950s and seen as the height of good taste, China’s mass production of replica Eames has tainted their status and turned it into a kitschy hangover of early postmodernist design. Their patents no longer monopolised, their capital no longer under individual control. Imbedded into and around this communal table are monitor screens displaying a combination of real time and recorded footage. Large, looming industrial shelving units are filled with uniform plastic boxes and wires where pumps and filters diligently preform unknown tasks while mp3 players emit ‘ambient’ white noise.
Every aspect of this space is carefully and fastidiously controlled by Big Brother – or Pattison himself in this instance. The digital screens, the white noise and the light system: a combination of LED and natural light rigged as an accelerated loop of a traditional working day, are manned from an offsite master server – one cannot help wonder how close Orwell really may have been in 1984 where knowledge truly was power.
Individual sculptures of industrial style shelving and digital equipment were initially installed across East London. They functioned as ‘lobby art’ in Campus London, a space for digital start-ups, Second Home, a shared work environment and Hackspace where Pattison himself used as his workspace during his 18-month residency. One such opportunistic sculpture used the ‘free’ means at its disposal in Second Home, mainly the electricity granted by its location. Pattison turned this energy into the production of Bitcoin royalties – peer-to-peer digital currency that ironically needs fossil fuels to be produced. These sculptures explore the exchange value attributed to a work of art, the absurd dichotomy between the world of art as a social intervention and art as a commodity.
Pattison exhibition initially seems to be a utopian, idealised space for a community to converge and share knowledge - free Wi-Fi included. The plastic however still covers the fake Eames, we cannot sit down. How do we turn electricity into cold hard cash? The early gift economy of the World Wide Web quickly and irrevocably became commercialised in the 1980s, utopian ideals subsumed into profit. Many shared live/work spaces are run for profit, not the community they purport to serve. The dissemination, control and consumption of knowledge within them is acutely seen as the result of a neo-liberal, deregulated society. User, Space is not a space to share, the art is for sale, knowledge will cost you.
Cannibalism aside, Swift and Pattison’s dystopian world share many similarities – they highlight the darkness of their present. Seen through the LED lights of now, these mimetic solutions serve to illustrate just how far we are from the utopian dream.