Art - Julian Stallbrass canvasses the public on the new Brit art show
It is now a standard strategy of artists, when asked about their work, to say that it establishes a series of tensions or oppositions that it is up to the viewer to sort out. Yet, despite the hyperactive publicity machine surrounding contemporary art, very little is heard from the viewers themselves. What follows is a collection of opinions about one room in the current display of British contemporary art at Tate Britain, "Intelligence".
Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane's An Intro-duction to Folk Archive, a display of objects, photographs and videos that they have collected and made documenting British folk culture, is the most popular work in the show. Visitors spend a long time in the room, poring over strange little artefacts: a Lego rock band; a head made from fragments of brightly coloured candy; photographs of scarecrows and party-goers in fancy dress; and videos ranging from documentation of anti-capitalist protests, through face-pulling and pipe-smoking competitions to road-kill memorials. Folk culture is a broad category in this archive, encompassing painted fingernails, traditional rites and festivals, and the handmade products of small business.
The Tate's view of the work, as expressed in the catalogue, is as follows:
". . . the project developed out of their [the artists'] interest in the authentic forms of cultural activity and self- expression - authentic in the sense that these activities help to define individuals and communities, resisting the homogeneous effects of mass consumer culture manufactured by global capitalism . . . Concerned that certain grass-roots activities were in danger of being eclipsed by the ubiquity of a dominant consumer culture, the artists set out to document exemplars of contemporary folk art before they became extinct."
Despite the suitably civic spin - the defence of "authentic community" - put on the piece by the Tate, An Introduction to Folk Archive is firmly and conventionally in neutral. It is unlikely that viewers are meant to admire both a protest banner opposing the Brixton bombing and an example of equally DIY Orange Order propaganda. Such works do not impose viewpoints and do allow a range of responses, but they have no room for handling those opinions, let alone allowing feedback to affect their future development. Given the lack of facilities for meaningful dialogue about the work, the views of the public remain undeveloped, undiscussed and often unexpressed.
So, in the spirit of "social inclusion", the mantra of today's art apparatchik, I decided to canvass visitors to the Folk Archive room for their views. Here is what they made of it:
"This is my favourite room in the show. It puts low art in a high-art setting. It's truer than the work in the other rooms."
"It gives credibility and acknowledgement to cultural forms that are too often discounted or ruled out. A wonderful record of bizarreness and eccentricity."
"Some people will go through the other rooms thinking how mad modern art is. Then they get to this room, and they see that the rest of culture is equally loony - I mean loony in a good way. There is madness embedded in real culture."
"What does it mean for artists to set up a folk art archive, rather than the people who make the art themselves?"
"I really liked it, but that it is documentary should be made clearer. One of those objects on display, I've got one at home. It can't be great art."
"This is a room about which I have no opinion. You feel pressured to say something good about it because, otherwise, you'd be called a snob. They could have chosen many more extraordinary items of folk culture that people would have admired more straightforwardly, but instead went for a mix of the mundane and the eccentric. It adds up to a conventional view of Britishness."
"You can take anything as art if you look at it in an arty way. The photo of the Brixton hairdressing salon window just shows Afro-Caribbean ways of making hairstyles. You can take it as folk culture if you want, but that's not their intention. The whole thing is a jumble of too diverse things. Being in this room is just like going into a shop in Brighton."
Culture, we are insistently told, should become more inclusive and allow participation, yet there are powerful commercial and institutional forces arrayed against the consequences of genuine involvement in the arts. Various works in "Intelligence" appear to grope towards an active engagement with their public, yet, for now, they remain elements of a one-way conversation, their questions and statements hanging unanswered in the air.
"Intelligence: new British art 2000" is at Tate Britain (020 7887 8008) until 24 September
Julian Stallabrass is the author of High Art Lite, published by Verso (£22)
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