Haha this is great! Made me think about our original idea of the life drawing class, but the problems with that were that we were still segregating people and the perhaps cliche idea that being creative=going to life drawing class.
Could be interesting to do a sort of flash mob life drawing class on a tube carriage. One intervention with one of us in one of those nude suits, one of us giving out pens and paper and three of us as posed as regular commuters to participate so others will be more inclined to join in. Could also do another one and replace the person in nude suit with a trolley with a bowl of fruit on it.
This way we would be questioning the idea of free time and what we do with it, as well as peoples creative and social inhibitions. Life drawing is usually a private, intimate thing between people with similar interests who have all purposefully used their free time to attend a class. By springing it on people like this we're questioning this organised form of creativity. There's also a lot of humour in having someone in a nude suit and also a trolley with a bowl of fruit on it in a place like the tube.
Just an idea to think about!
the notion of the free individual is central to understanding capitalism. but
what does this freedom amount to? is it little more than the freedom to
consume, or to sell your labour power? one thing is for sure: it
is impossible to be autonomous within a system of commodification and
competition.
humans are fundamentally creative beings. however, a worker in a supermarket or
a call centre, for instance, cannot possibly be a painter or an architect etc.
they just do not have the time. we cannot be creative until we are liberated
from a certain form of work.
commutes are a decent example of ‘wasted time’. we should strive to intervene
in this wasted or ‘dead’ time, shake things up a bit and explore the possibilities for creativity...
1. underground station gallery
2. fake Queen and bodyguards on the underground
3. suspicious people on the underground, man in black
4. seats reserved for nuns on the tube
5. world religion day
6. dressed up as police man and dressed up religious girl, he starts arguments - how do people stand up for her
7. like the Metro newspaper, or the Sun, have a free newspaper cover lying around with absurd absurd news (Apocalypse is happening now)- people will pick it up and most likely believe it
8. Chalk on train station stone floor (eg. positive message) but with a hashtag! Important that twitter will kick off or any social media with a hashtag
9. video series of reporting something about a policeman to another policeman
10. Video series of randomly running away from a policeman when passing by, record reaction
11. pretending to shoot a reality sho won the tube, automatically involving others
- Establish an aim for our project
- Outline theme
- Consider political impact
- Idea to challenge leisure and 'time to spare' time
Outcomes:
- Theme: to bepassively involved in the INTERACTION & SPACE in tube / train station QUESTIONING THE IDEA OF 'WAITING' TIME
- Difficulties - creativity (on hold)
- Finalise project idea
Action plan:
1) Make Twitter account
2) Posters (paper from library) acting as flyers saying:
Thinking of anything creative? Talk to the stranger next to you. #INTERACT
3) Distribute flyers on tube and train stations on every seat (N/W/E/S)
Dress up?
Act suspicious - social behaviour - running from police men
So we are meeting tomorrow (weds) at 2pm in the library to discuss all our amazing ideas!
Just thought I'd post it incase anyone didn't see the comments.
Also, I think we should make our blog look pretty, but I have no idea how... Anyway, that's stuff to discuss tomorrow!
See you then!
A piece on IDEA explores how free time and space would be
turned into an entirely different none from the perspective of one self and the
mass people. It also explores the paradoxical notion of free time and mass
leisure time, while the former one is essentially work-free, absolutely and
exclusive personal time, the latter is, to be exactly, the mass ‘leisure space’
in urban city in fact consumes rather than serves free time as city space
canalises the masses (exploits its energy, movement& free time). Additionally, it pointed out how our social system and society discourages
loneliness, how one spending free time alone
would be considered very suspicious, and engaging in art (reading a book) would
be seen as an antisocial act. As society sees free time= consume= happiness **********************************************************
Free time has ceased to be a noble
privilege and has become some kind of mass nobility certificate in modern
times. Modern “mass” free time is however a paradoxical notion. “Free” is in
fact and essentially the individual time, the time when not only you don’t have
to work and painfully make a living but also you don’t have to conform in any
way to others, that is to get into the environment of the surrounding people.
Free time is something personal – absolutely and exclusively personal –
otherwise it is not free.
Nothing makes the paradox “mass leisure
time” more visible than the metamorphosis undergone by its spatial support:
the mass urban space, the “leisure” space of the modern city to be exact. Time is an abstract dimension, but the urban space is
concrete, present and extremely efficient. Apparently, an increasing number of
people with more and more spare time require the city to provide adequate
space, and the requirement was answered. In fact, the answer came about long
before the issue. The space is the one to impose itself onto the mass. Left to
its own freedom of time, the mass would move exactly like a lot of Brownian
particles in disorder, filled with energy but not with sense. The city space
canalizes the mass movement and exploits its energy in direct ratio with its
free time. Urban space doesn’t serve free time but consumes it.
Utopia (indifferent space)
Free time is by definition
the time of pleasure and, if possible, even the time of happiness.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
described a perfect modern society. Free time meant there especially two
things: free sex (children were conceived in vitro anyway) and official drug
use. Drugs had a perfect chemical composition so that no unhealthy outcome
existed. Except for addiction of course – but pleasure as such is the one to
create the addiction. The fact that getting high (merely killing time) was
extremely time consuming also determined the space planning. To be precise, the
way in which the city space was organized wasn’t very important. Besides the
strict functionality of the social system, the only clear requirement was that
of not encouraging loneliness (getting high doesn’t mean loneliness but evasion
even from the personal condition). To spend your free time alone was considered
very suspicious. To read books, for instance, was an antisocial act – but for a
reason that sounds foretelling today coming from Huxley: because if you spend
your time reading you don’t have enough time left to consume, and to consume is
compulsory in the industry’s best interest. Art was also excluded – happiness
should always be preferred to art, Huxley1points out. Modern society was
imagined as a society of generalized happiness.
On one condition though: not to be
different. For as precise as in vitro technology may be, by mistake, alas,
people different from the mass would be born. Unfortunately there was no place
for them in the “brave new world” (consequently they were deported on an
island in the ocean). The space of perfect modernity was exclusively reserved
to mass-people, a space wherein individual time simply didn’t take place.’
Brilliant installation by Dawn Ng, "I Fly Like Paper Get High Like Planes". Came across this browsing tumblr. To me these paper planes act like intruders into our personal space. Perhaps this (politically?) represents the feeling of being part of 'the passive', by being put on the spot in a public space. Social interaction vs emotion of nostalgia (yearning for privacy). How does this further relate to our project? Well, the artist created a space, a surrounding for an individual / or a group of people to feel a variety of emotions. Social interaction possible, but maybe not likely? Could create a space for out project. If we are going with an environment such as the tube, we could set up a creative space (depending on what we ultimately decide to do....). Lets remember to question the politics (representation/interaction/outcomes) of out project as well.
Interesting article on the 'geography' of the London Underground, and how the tube map itself contributes to a particular sense of identification and interaction for people with each other and the City of London in "urban space and time"(p.18).
To be able to spread it across social media, we do need a hashtag as someone mentioned before, and more importantly a project title.
If we want to start a flash mob out flyers could be black in the background and have white writing, saying:
Thinking of anything creative? Talk to the stranger next to you. #USEYOURTIME
(FB/ Twitter/Instagram icons, smaller than the example below though)
or Thinking of anything creative? Talk to the stranger next to you. #INTERACT
Kinda like this.
I'm not sure, all we need to do is trigger social interaction with others. Perhaps we need music, or leave little notes?
That last post about Improv Everywhere and taking yearbook photos on the subway, reminded me about this video that came up on my Facebook newsfeed a while back. It tackles issues of social stigmatisation, in regards to male and female dancers, and improv in a pubic space, reaction of, and interaction with the public. I remember I brought up this subject in the Politics of Vision class last term, where we looking at how gender roles are defined within society. I made the point that dancing is just dancing, regardless who does what, its an expression or solely exercise - and that I would not react differently to males or females dancing if it is the same type of dancing. This might be because I'm coming from a dance background. Others can easily relate dancing with objects, i.e. a pole, to females, due to social stigmatisation of strip clubs, for example. This brings up matters of concern and debate in terms of thinking "How seductive can one perform with a pole (for ex.) until it becomes socially stigmatised, and people want to throw money at you". When thinking of the objects around us and making use of these in our acts of expression, I view the pole as a structure aimed for exercise or performance art - this on my part might be due to my background of working for a circus, in which all kinds of materials and structures and the pole, "Chinese Pole", are used for practise and incredible performance art.
Make sure you watch the AUDIENCE as well as the performers!!
Please have a look here at some (male) dancers using the poles on the subway in part of their performance:
And more cos it's just that cool:
(These guys actually go around to collect money and are quite successful with the donations they receive)
Women doing "pole fitness" on the tube:
Here is video of a females who are actually a stripper using the pole in the tube for an impromptu sess :(
This is quite cringe-worthy but I think it's a good example to show how the public reacts on levels of such sleaziness and agreeably cheap demonstration what could have been a more "classy"/professional/clean approach to the actual profession of stripping or the desire or taking off ones clothes on the tube. You can see the audience is a lot more engaging now ... WHY THO?
Before I go on too much of a tangent -
Here I think it is important to look at the reaction of the people on the tube depending on gender of the performer and the style of dancing. Here is a picture of acrobats performing in the circus show using the Chinese Pole:
I think doing out interventions in a space like the tube is a perfect environment regardless of what we choose to do. This modern form of transport alienates our human nature from contact with each other, and in the most unnatural way possible, and humans collectively comply. This might be to the tight spaces available and privacy around ourselves is still a privilege and up to us who we let in, which is why I think it is interesting to look at how people would reacted when the are 1. forced to interact with each other (in tight spaces like the t) and 2. what drives them to voluntarily participate. Behaviour behaviour! So interesting as to what has been controlled and what drives people to act in the way they do. It differs from being alone, to being in a group of people you know, and being alone in a group of strange people, as well.
This is why I thought it would be interesting to look at the behavioural actions of the public when we do our interventions. There's a difference about interacting ourselves, and in the videos, the performers, with the public observers, and to have the willingness to cause commotion or attract attention. So we could 1. attract attention (for ex. with music) or 2. be sly and let everything run its course.
/// I think we can agree that we need to take people out of their comfort zone ///
And we should definately record it ! I'm gonna stop now cos I'm getting carried away with these videos and the pillar in the library looks a little too inviting for me to try out some of these dope moves (in the first couple vids mind you). If evidence pops up it could be title as "Student fails miserably at using pillar for pole, breaks leg and loses dignity in process"
This is a TED talk by Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere, in which he shared his experience of doing different improv projects in public places. I find it quite interesting and relevant to what we talked about yesterday.
Creativity has its place in daily living and if it is not present in the natural environment around us, it needs to be created!
It's interesting to me how we've created this social world where there is no natural expressions possible or accepted in daily life! (especially on the tube!)
And there is another project done by Improv Everywhere where they sat up a photography studio in an underground carriage and took yearbook photos for the passengers, thought we could draw some inspirations from it. x
I'm about to go to sleep and just had an idea so wanted to quickly write it down so it doesn't get lost for eternity, so thought might was well write it here!
Thinking about what we talked about today, giving out blank fliers for people to do what they like, and also lack of communication with strangers on tube etc. could be interesting to get people to write down what they think/general observations about others in the carriage, or could even draw them? Then get people to post it to the hashtag??
People aren't willing to talk to people around them in real life, but we are all so comfortable to say whatever we like to whoever we like in the online world. Could create an interesting environment if everyone has this same flyer, and knows that the people around them are sort of indirectly talking to them. Kind of like a real life online space if that makes any sense??? If we anonymously post entries that people send us then people could feel comfortable to write/draw what they like, and people could have fun speculating wether it's about them or not.
(Also had the idea that we could all go to ikea and steal loads of those tiny pencils to give out with the flyers incase people don't have their own pens. But maybe that's just because I'm craving their meatballs with that delicious sauce.....)
Basically I'm half asleep so sorry if this makes no sense, just thought I'd write it down!
Oh and also, we should definitely meet up this week. When is good for everyone? Wednesday?
why we are working so much, and for so long? very interesting when considering the impact the apparent 'lost dream' of shorter working hours would have on leisure/wasted time...
I just read this essay on pop music and leisure, a lot of it talks about music very technically (which went right over my head, but could be interesting to the more musically minded) but also says some interesting stuff about leisure. He says there is more to analysing pop music and 'serious' music in terms of 'high' and 'low' brow entertainment, but he does definitely does refer to them in this way for the most part. Whether you agree with this or not it's an interesting essay.
He notes how pop music is industrial in it's promotion and distribution, even though it is supposedly a leisure device used to get away from work. It's interesting to think about the production of leisure 'machines'.
The standardisation of pop music (due to its industrial production) is a big theme in the essay, he discusses how it's important to keep this hidden (through 'labeling technique', genres etc.) so an illusion of individualism is upheld. If you aren't choosing what you do with your free time then surely it's not really free, right? (This reminded me of pop music fans constantly arguing over who copied who, everyone's copying everyone obviously!!)
He also talks about how the standardisation of pop music features repetition on one hand, but on the other it's used as an escape from the monotony and repetition of labour.
The fact that pop-music-industry-people are always found saying that they're 'giving the people what they want' is criticised by claiming that the 'people' using pop music as leisure are produced by the same mode of production as the leisure 'stuff' they are given.
Personally the most interesting point made in the article is that the boredom associated with work means that leisure time is associated with an absence of effort which, importantly, means there is less chance for new experience.
I've just read the essay and made some notes so haven't thought too much about how we could turn these ideas into a project, but I think a lot of the points (especially the last one) could be helpful. I'll attach the link incase you want to have a read yourself
(just thought, am I allowed to post the link to the essay if its only for goldsmiths students?? kinda seems like I wouldn't be allowed.... I've done it anyway...)
When we were last together, we all came up with some good ideas. I think the one we decided to act on was the idea of creating a space where different groups of society can join us in a life drawing class. The politics behind this was to try and examine whether leisure and free time was just a preconceived notion, and whether we actually make the most of our supposed free time.
We wanted to look at those who had the time but not the resources, and those who had the resources but not the time.
However, I believe we are selling ourselves short with this initial proposal. Although I love the idea of creating a space where people are free to create in their spare time, I feel by trying to aim at specific groups we ourselves are unintentionally creating a divide and a limit on peoples abilities to make the most of their free time. By segregating, we are not tackling the issues and politics that surround the work/leisure conundrum. To truly see the politics i believe our intervention needs to be accessible to all and not just certain social groups. We need to challenge the 'normal' that I have mentioned before, and create something that can make every body's day just a little abnormal.
Additionally, the life drawing itself is just one form of creativity and by only offering this to the public we are ourselves conforming them to our desires and our limits of leisure. We need to offer something that allows everyone to feel 'free' and to create and enjoy. As mentioned in the 'Proposal Inspiration' post, we need to allow everyone to do something that they individually WANT to do.
I think we really need to look at what actually is spare time, and how far we want to push this. Are we going to simply just understand spare time as the time when we are fully finished with our work or objectives for the day, or can spare time be conceived as any space of time that is not taken up by anything in particular?, ie: waiting rooms, queues, on the tube, waiting for your coffee. These are all examples of free time in the everyday mundane but they are not really capitalised on.
I really liked how Nadia came up with the proposal for challenging the public directly, by approaching the business men whilst they were walking down the street (which could be seen as free time), and encouraging them just to do something/anything. I think we need to run with this idea and start to think of guerrilla style interventions, that will challenge the public to do something with their 'free' time, to change it from wasted time to real leisure.
I found this article about how creative jobs are reserved for the privileged, which is relevant to what we discussed on class and creativity. It's from Forbes so mainly talks about careers and internships rather than having the time, recourses and opportunities to be creative in a leisure activity.
The article also doesn't just discuss drawing or painting as a creative pursuit, it mentions journalism (54% of the top journalists in the country were privately educated, while only 7% of the population actually attended private school). I know we were discussing other forms of creativity other than drawing that we could use for the project. Giving people (who wouldn't usually do so) a chance to document part of their life, and maybe finding a way to publish what they have to say could be an idea to think about.
Anyway, I'll leave the article here for you to read if you like.
I know that one idea regarding the art class we were discussing was about getting people with the money but not the time, to do something creative. Obviously this would be considerably harder to do than giving art supplies to those who may not usually have the money to spare. I'm guessing for a busy business person time is very valuable (not that it isn't for everyone else, but y'know).
I was talking about this with a friend and he had the idea of going to Canary Wharf or some place like that to try and get busy looking people to stop for a second to do a quick sketch (or something) for us. This could be done on paper, or (if we are able to acquire one) an iPad.
Using an iPad could be interesting as it's a piece of merchandise used a lot for business purposes, but also has the potential to be used in a creative way with all sorts of different apps and things (http://www.creativebloq.com/digital-art/art-on-the-ipad-1232669)
"Go to work, send your kids to school... blah, blah, blah", we follow this same mantra everyday, yet when we see it written down that is when we stop and look and actually listen.
What I really like about this image is how it encapsulates all the themes we have been discussing;
'Go to work' and 'watch T.V', dealing with the idea of work/leisure, the fact that both seem to be an order we have to follow really resonates with rhetoric of whether we actually 'enjoy' our free leisure time, or is it still just contributing to the capitalist system of work.
The one that really strikes a chord personally however, is the command to 'act normal'. What does that even mean? The idea that we are told to act normal suggests that we must be repressing some urge to act abnormal.
I think we should challenge this urge to act abnormal, like the surrealist movement, and reverse the mantra that seems to control the everyday. It would be interesting to create an act in which we can truly say 'we are free' without it being a preconceived notion. I would love to explore an activity that is free from the constraints and commands of society and be able to enact something we truly do enjoy and can actually declare to be 'free'.
People should not have to be told that they are free. It is an individual task, free from external control. Therefore, I think we need to try and break away from any systems and training that control the individual to create a space in which they are truly free to do as they please, whether it be something or the craziest thing they imagine.
Who knows, someone just might hate walking on pavements.
