Chordata:Crystal Cathedrals/Palaces..Transparent like Glass.
We are at a crossroad. For all the "new" frontierism of new media and social nets with idealist,sometimes utopian emerging philosophies of
open transparency ,we are in grave danger of throwing out what lessons the past and those who came before (our Ancestors) can teach us.
We have access to vast stores of information,but rely on "curators" to put this information into context.
Each generation makes its own meaning although it seems we had almost 20 years of watershed and backlash to the
core ideas of the hippie 60s counterculture. We have now the glimmering of a global movement for change (not unprecedented,because
Peace movement ,hippie movement were global) in the Age of Digital Nomads.
The ideas and experiment of the 60s did filter through into the general culture,but as it was not an era of documentation,much of the essence
is lost and needs to be gathered together and renewed for the present (Diggers would be a good example). The essence is far from the stereotypical
representations oozing through advertising and "branding " cultural memes. Grab a T-shirt and you are the 60s mode.
Lately,the whole history of Bauhaus has been absorbing me,and parallels to present times as related to arts.
It's worth considering Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition in London,1851.
Paxton was not an architect, but was in fact, a SELF-TAUGHT engineer. Would it be possible for Paxton to
construct this today for a large mainstream public event ? I think not. He would need pedigrees,he'd have to make it through an existing multi-layered
caste system and bureaucracy in the arts.
It's important to distinguish between events like Burning Man (which may have some impact on the culture generally in terms of what is taken back into
local communities) and grassroots community-driven endeavors.
Welfare State International,in the UK,is a prime example of a hugely successful arts- without- art school- pedigrees group,who managed to
insert art into the mainstream and into communities in need of revival economically.
WSI created so many locally-based entrepreneurial opportunities and community renewal projects,it's a major undertaking in itself to absorb the range of their influence.
The history of Welfare State and its founders John Fox and Sue Gill (now Dead Good) is something for anyone interested in the arts to study
right now. There is so much to learn from their experience and why the founders pulled away from this type of work ultimately.
Lantern House continues the work and ,specifically, training of arts community activists.
This Posterous really is just a notepad where I intend to jot thoughts down in an informal way as well as expand
on ideas coming out of ARTSEVO on Twitter which is an experiment in itself.
Today,I'm thinking about the great battle that was fought at Bauhaus between Masters of Form and Workshop Masters and the backdrop at that time,economically,
socially (Weimer Republic) in Germany. THE most popular thing at Bauhaus was the canteen and the one meal a day that artist/students could get by doing trade-off work(for food tokens) like
gardening (the school had its own vegetable gardens).
LINKS:
http://www.welfare-state.org (Engineers of the Imagination)
