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Yesterday night, as it was mentioned in PM on Radio 4 (and yes, I know I'm an ex-pat), I popped over to the live feed of the installation currently on the Fourth Plinth, Antony Gormley's One & Another. For those of you who haven't followed this, Gormley asked the British Public to submit their names into a draw, and pulled out 2400 entries; each lucky winner gets an hour on the top of the plinth to do whatever they would like. Last night, there was a woman dressed as a gnome who sat there with her mobile phone (but it was 3am in the morning); as I type, a woman is reading out tweets from people supporting her in her standing on the plinth, which she's doing to raise money for Cancer Research UK (I think). She's apparently also an Ann Summer's party organiser, so there you go.
G and I were talking about this afterwards, having watched some of the 'best of' video clips. G described it as 'Britain unleashed' - and I thought, yes, we are actually the sort of country that puts people on plinths who then dance the Charleston and get the masses in Trafalgar Square to join in, or to partake in the Plinth Olympics, or who dress up in 80s-bright Lycra, stick the iPod in, and happily jive around to our favourite tunes. We are also a nation who go up to the top of the plinth to paint with our bodies, to sketch, to campaign for charity, to do performance art (a lovely video of a 'plinther' who went up dressed as a nineteenth century man and came down dressed as a nineteenth century woman, complete with corset). That's a far more accurate representation of us as a nation than anything Big Brother and its ilk has to offer.
We were also thinking about successful public art, which in the UK always seems to have this inclusive, hands-on quality, this sense that the public is not actually separated from art, that you make it by participating in it. G's prime example was The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall at the Tate, which I sadly missed; according to him, part of the appeal was just watching other people lying on their backs in the mirrored ceiling, watching you. The participants made it what it was, and without it, there wouldn't have been any point. Spectator as artwork - but not in a passive voyeuristic way.
So it was with great delight that I read this morning in Mary Beard's blog of the quite frankly brilliant new bollards outside Cambridge University library - in the shape of piles of books. There are pictures if you follow the link. Apparently the ones in the middle can be swung about, changing the shape of the pile, by readers walking by. There is something infinitely pleasing about imagining the stream of dons headed to the UL in the damp Cambridge morning taking a moment to adjust the piles left crazed by the undergraduates of the previous night - or maybe it will be the other way around.
G and I were talking about this afterwards, having watched some of the 'best of' video clips. G described it as 'Britain unleashed' - and I thought, yes, we are actually the sort of country that puts people on plinths who then dance the Charleston and get the masses in Trafalgar Square to join in, or to partake in the Plinth Olympics, or who dress up in 80s-bright Lycra, stick the iPod in, and happily jive around to our favourite tunes. We are also a nation who go up to the top of the plinth to paint with our bodies, to sketch, to campaign for charity, to do performance art (a lovely video of a 'plinther' who went up dressed as a nineteenth century man and came down dressed as a nineteenth century woman, complete with corset). That's a far more accurate representation of us as a nation than anything Big Brother and its ilk has to offer.
We were also thinking about successful public art, which in the UK always seems to have this inclusive, hands-on quality, this sense that the public is not actually separated from art, that you make it by participating in it. G's prime example was The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall at the Tate, which I sadly missed; according to him, part of the appeal was just watching other people lying on their backs in the mirrored ceiling, watching you. The participants made it what it was, and without it, there wouldn't have been any point. Spectator as artwork - but not in a passive voyeuristic way.
So it was with great delight that I read this morning in Mary Beard's blog of the quite frankly brilliant new bollards outside Cambridge University library - in the shape of piles of books. There are pictures if you follow the link. Apparently the ones in the middle can be swung about, changing the shape of the pile, by readers walking by. There is something infinitely pleasing about imagining the stream of dons headed to the UL in the damp Cambridge morning taking a moment to adjust the piles left crazed by the undergraduates of the previous night - or maybe it will be the other way around.
