ARTISTS TALKING

# 10 [14 November 2008]

Around the area that I live I have noticed a few artistic responses to the evaporation of banking confidence. ‘Six weeks that shook the world’, the effect of my exhibition has been far more widespread than I expected.

‘I STOLE YOUR MONEY’ is a small poster that has been pasted on walls, telephone boxes and in this case the post box at the end of my road. Instant and succinct. 

Even though I looked at the windows and behind the front door of the alternative cafes and usual dumping spots for political flyers, I could only find a single copy of the ‘Never Mind the Bankers........’ flyer.  This was a bit of a mystery. I thought it would be popular, flyers everywhere, but nobody knew anything about it. One thing I did notice was how the spots for distributing unauthorised publicity are now very limited. Around here it is even illegal to give out flyers on the street. It was raining very heavily on the afternoon of the march. I was working so I couldn’t go. But there were no reports in the national press, no comments on the news, nothing in the Argus.

The picture of the Lehmans mug is from the front page of the Art Newspaper, given away free at all the art fairs in London, a couple of weeks ago. It is a actually a photograph of a painting, ‘Pintura Actualidad’ produced in instant response to the credit crunch by Jorge Diezma, on sale at the Zoo Art fair for $1500. 

www.theartnewspaper.com/frieze

# 9 [13 November 2008]

I also had the good fortune whilst I was in Paris to be staying in the delicious Montmartre Studios, live/work spaces for artists build by the city council in the thirties.

More exciting. The building is on Rue Ordener, almost directly opposite the site of the first motorised hold-up. This happened in 1911, and was carried out by the notorious Bonnot Gang. According to the guide book it was a meticulously planned raid. As well as being hardcore anarchists the gang had a reputation for being sharp dressers and doing things with style. The previous week they had stolen a Delaunay-Belleville limousine from the home of a top industrialist. This type of car was the one favoured by the French President and the Czar, and was capable of speeds up to 125mph, this at a time when police cars had a maximum of 23mph.

On the morning of the robbery, after the gang had sat outside the branch of the Société Générale for an hour the uniformed messenger finally turned up to deliver the banks daily cash and correspondence. Before he could go inside two members of the gang wrestled him and his bodyguard to the ground, shooting him twice in the chest before he was relieved of his briefcase. The get-away vehicle fled north before any of the general public or police could give chase. The aim was to ditch the car over a cliff near Le Havre, but they got lost, ending up on the beach in Dieppe. Nevertheless they calmly caught the train back into Paris. The briefcase contained only 4000 francs in cash, it was mainly bonds. What they did get was an international reputation and a place in the history books.

For the full story and all the politics; The Bonnot Gang by Richard Parry published by Rebel Press. It is an excellent read.

# 8 [12 November 2008]

I’ve just come across the brochure for L’Argent, an exhibition of money related art that I visited in Paris during the summer. Pure coincidence, it was useful to see just before showing the cash machine photographs. Most of the pieces on show at Le Plateau were at least fifteen years old, and they did have a Duran Duran Smash Hits old school feel to them. Makes me realize that the bulk of art that involves a political charge is inevitably ephemeral.

There were early works by a lot of celebrated artists including Thomas Hirschhorn, Orlan, General Idea, Felix Gonzalez-Torres et al. Mostly wry comments or critiques of the nature of money; the dominant hold economics has over us all. Sophie Calle had still images from her video of peoples facial expressions and body language when withdrawing money from cash machines. Interesting contemporary portraiture.

By far the most enjoyable and provoking piece was a ten minute video work by Fikret Atay, Rebels of the Dance made in 2002. Two lads, egged on and ridiculed by their mates out of picture, perform a self-conscious dance either side of a cash machine that is located inside a banking hall. The situation is one anyone who uses a cash card must have experienced, loitering youth.  For me it illustrates the irony that banks can provide unquestioned 24hour, heated drop in facilities, whilst those without are moved on, forced to seek shelter at bus stops or behind blustery bits of fencing.

www.fracidf-leplateau.com/en/index.html

# 7 [16 October 2008]

A couple of people have noted that the photographs show my underlying obsession with OSB sterling board. The reconstituted wood sheeting we used to build Vincent Maugers huge Undercroft sculpture in the summer. It is a fabulous material and has a lot of possibilities, but I think that in this case it is purely coincidental. In these pictures I have been avoiding that kind of aesthetic choice. They are merely redundant cash machines, documented as simply as possible.

# 6 [9 October 2008]

On Saturday we decided to take a tour of Brighton city centres glorious collection of cash machines, both operative and defunct. It was raining again. Despite this, and current economic instabilities, the shoppers were out in force. Any form of coherent on street discussion was limited, but checking out the queues and the fiscal activity was interesting. Some good cash machine stories came out. This particular machine was elected the slowest in the area. We withdrew some cash. It certainly was begrudging in its delivery, and seems to have some money stuck in it’s mechanism.

# 5 [5 October 2008]

Early yesterday, rain lashing down, on my way to primp the exhibition before the first visitors I stopped off at my local cash machine to get some money, as you do. Scattered all over the pavement was soggy monopoly money, about sixty quids worth. Good luck for me, and for people out for a walk in the middle of an all night game of monopoly. A bad sign though for the government? Needless to say, the cash machine wasn't working, often the case on Saturday mornings. 

# 4 [2 October 2008]

Spent the past day putting the photographs up. Lower than you would hang pictures normally. It reminded of how in the Pompidou Centre the Malevich ‘Black Square’ painting is hung really high, about five metres up, where the heating ducts should be. It made me gasp out loud when I spotted it.

# 3 [30 September 2008]

The irony of all this is that for the past few weeks I have had tennis elbow and can’t control the fingers very well on my right hand. So when a shop assistant asks me to type in my ‘four digit code’ and then turns away, I have to ask them to key in the numbers or risk making a mess of it using my left hand. This straightforward sale turns into a mass of niggly problems for the assistant, who can’t possibly know what the legal position on this is. Shopping etiquette.

Last week, I even had to ask the man behind me in the queue for the cash machine to type in my secret code. He wondered whether it was legal to do it. 

# 2 [30 September 2008]

This mundane Halifax on Frith St in London is on the site of the Moka, Soho’s first expresso bar. Opened with flamboyant style by film star Gina Lollobrigida in 1953 it was closed in a different manner by the novelist William Burroughs almost twenty years later.

Apparently in the summer of 1972 Burroughs and his crowd were regulars at the café but after ‘outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy’ from the owner and a slice of ‘poisonous cheesecake’ a vengeful Burroughs was spurred into action. Rather than sipping coffee and conversation inside the Moka, he spent his days tape recording incidental sounds and photographing the reactions outside. Giving staff and customers the bad eye. After a couple of weeks of this Burroughs began playing back the sound recordings on the street. If the police were called, Burroughs would claim he was making a documentary on historic Soho, they could do nothing. More photos were taken. ‘They are seething in there. The horrible old proprietor, his frizzy-haired wife and slack jawed son, the snarling counterman. I have them and they know it.’ Pressured by this maverick action business in the café began to dry up. The opening hours got shorter and shorter until at the end of October it closed.

A gloating Burroughs theorized that this kind of action could be carried out anywhere. ‘You could cause a riot easily. All you have to do is to take the tape recorders with riot material already recorded and then record any sort of scuffle that goes on. When you start playing it back, your going to have more scuffles….. a recorded whistle will bring cops. A recorded gunshot when they have their guns out – well – it’s a simple as that’

All quotes from ‘Feedback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden’ by William S. Burroughs.

This article appears in Vacuum, a free magazine for Brightons critical art scene... 

# 1 [29 September 2008]

I have been taking photographs of redundant ATMs for the past six years. My interest was spurred by the duff attempts the high street banks made to invisibly mend the gaping holes left in the their often splendid buildings. Large pieces of marble squeezed back into ill fitting holes, pathetic bits of shutter ply slapped into place, bodged brickwork to hide the clues; handiwork more reminiscent of a failed safe breaker than the secure pillars of commerce.