Page 58 - Studio International - October 1972

plant: 'Make one deliberate error in the course tube, folded it over itself into various shapes, those staged within the gallery context, and even
of making one unit (car)'. The resultant product and played around inside it. This event the 'forced amusement' character of festivals is
would be remarkable, attention-grabbing, and embodied with striking simplicity an attitude of felt as cramping. Like many artists, they have
therefore, given the true character of marketing, crucial importance for architecture: that for very been obliged to reconsider deeply the uses to
saleable. If an industry is seen as a monolithic, little cost (the students paid for it themselves), which their work is put. Can the artist validly
hierarchically administered entity with with easily accessible materials, and a few hours work for himself (and a small group of friends
associated satellite companies, intersecting with interesting preparation, a large, exciting who share his basic assumptions), leaving the
`the economy' at various essential levels, then structure can be erected to serve ephemeral fate of his work outside his immediate reach to
Latham's proposal is dangerous nonsense. But purposes (and can just as easily be repeated). chance ? Or should he not build into his work,
its force is that it arises from seeing the same Structures are possible that need never come to from the moment of conception, some
events, the same activities of the same people in dictate the character of social action, nor inhibit characteristics which (he hopes, predicts) will to
a different, more fragmented way. Thus social change. And everybody can make this some satisfactory degree propel/catalyse a field
`industry', 'society', 'the State' and other such architecture, not only architects and builders. of response to it ?
hegemonies need no longer be regarded with a That Shaw and Botschuyver see the For ERG, as for all artists who use
sense of powerlessness. Their parts, differently marvellous in the ordinary as a positive value is life-systems and directly impinge upon people in
seen, are above all open to transformation. evident in much of their work. Many of their their art, this dilemma has special point and an
Although APG's initial expression of 'the projects — the New Australian Landscapes, ethical character. They are obliged to control
artist and industry' conjunction (artists taking in Brickhill, the Hayward Gallery installations of the initial stages of their art's use precisely
industry positions equivalent to 'pure research 1971 — parallel Magritte's vision. ERG see because their aim is to evoke possibilities, to
scientists') was naive and deserving of the Magritte as offering an invitation to entertain engage participation, to release the
criticism it is now getting, the above very radically different possibilities for organizing the spectator/participant from his compulsive
simplified version of part of Latham's current appearance of the world, as suggesting that our allegiance to the conceptual and physical status
theory should be sufficient to show that his given environment is an elaborate artifice which quo. In a sense, they have to force the
stand is now more formidable. we take to be reality, largely out of habit and spectator/participant to be, feel, free. The
It follows from Latham's premises that inheritance. It follows that we can enjoy the quality and intensity of his response is the
industry is neither the beneficent, necessary status quo more in the realization of its true, measure of their artistic success and the
force that its apologists portray nor is it the relative nature, or we can transform it in ways as question of 'artness' is irrelevant.
insanely destructive force that its attackers radical as Magritte imagined. But to ERG, at the The art scene is as much in need of
deride. It is 'organized working' (Latham). APG moment, to celebrate absurdity in painted `liberation' as any other overly-specialized area
and ERG aim to serve neither industry nor images seems to be an unnecessarily of human activity, but it has extraordinary
revolution, but rather to introduce into the way metaphorical procedure, productive mostly of adaptive powers, assimilating the most radical
both are seen a new perspective which would pictorial and illusionistic conceits which must be attacks upon it, the most preposterous art. Its
make these 'old confrontations (with their ineffective because of the weight of art history members are too adroit to be capable of fresh
deadlocked terminology) redundant' (ERG). prejudices attached to the painted image in the experience, and are now welcoming a lot of art
Yet for many people nowadays, myself included, public mind. With some enterprising which consists entirely in gestures of
these two poles symbolize a range of choices engineering, the most fabulous formations are sycophantic contempt for them. Short of
which it is compromising not to make, in art as possible, on a large scale, in the real world. rejecting the art world altogether, artists like
anywhere else. It may be that APG's enterprise The open-system event-structuring attitude ERG are searching for a valid stance on two
is indicative of a third, non-liberal alternative, to reality that I introduced earlier as the levels. One balances participation in the art
but this remains to be seen. consistent core of ERG's creative thinking gains world (no matter how 'liberating' of it) with
ERG aims constantly to demonstrate the different emphases in its performance events, its equally dedicated activity outside it — this means
viability of values that contradict those of experimental architecture, its projects. Whimsy, pursuing an activity flexible enough to function
rapacious technology by treating it as 'an open free-handed use of technology, and the effectively in both arenas. The other issues from
resource for the extraordinary'. In late March promotion of free acts by participants are all regarding all situations that occur as possible
Shaw and Botschuyver inflated off the roll a clearly whole — in ERG's work as in that of contexts for action, choosing to act in those
standard 300ft-long, 7ft-diameter polythene Archigram, Superstudio and many others. which strike the artist as interesting (bearing in
tube across the Sydney University swimming It is not surprising, then, that the tendency of mind Latham's remark that 'Context is half the
pool, with the participation of first-year ERG's activities should lead them outside art. work'); it does not matter for the initial
architecture students who swam around the Their least successful recent works have been choice whether the context is an art one or not.
Few artists have resolved this dilemma. At
present, much of ERG's work is staged in
contexts that are part art, but mostly not : like
Moomba. Their current project for a large, low,
plastic-grass mound in a public park, inflated by
hot air throughout a winter, thus creating a
temperate zone within which people may
engage in spring-summer activities, is an
example of their working wherever people are,
structuring events with no more apparent art
content than a patch of grass and just as familiar.
Art with this sort of purpose deserves a future. q

New Australian Landscapes, project, 1969
Stone Cloud