Once again Adam Curtis blesses us with his genius and wisdom as well as at the same time smack us in the face with a the glove of truth. As an artist it was painful reading for I recognized and agreed with much of what he was saying about the failure of artists to sufficiently fight or highlight the hidden world of power. I can´t speak for other artists, for but as for myself I can at least say that I tried my best to fight the good fight. I admit, as Curtis stated about artists, I too retreated into myself after failing. In my own case what I did to "retreat" was to emigrate to Norway for a quieter life. However, if I could get the opportunity to speak with Curtis (he is known for not often giving interviews) I would specifically ask him this: for how long should an artist or a journalist sacrifice their own lives for this fight? In the article he suggests for at least 3 years. This view was based on the approximate time of the civil rights movement in the US during the 1960s. In my case I battled for approximately 12 years. I still failed. I often wonder,/ponder if I failed because I was not good enough as a "political" artist or was it because people were just not ready to listen? After all everyone was having such a good time with all the borrowed money that was around there appeared not to be any problem. Indeed, it took the crash of 2008, causing millions of people to lose their life savings, homes and jobs, to finally wake everyone up. But even then, again as Curtis explains, the best we could could do was to protest for one day or write a banner explaining our feelings: "I feel sad". Even the Occupy Wall St movement took its time getting going and in the end was an utter failure because no one could agree on anything other than they all felt pissed off. And then everyone went home and lied to themselves in the belief that they had done their bit against the system when in actual fact it changed fck all. I would perhaps also like to say to Adam Curtis that, as a young art student, my initial reason for going to art school was in fact to become a painter and NOT a political artist at all. My heros were Caravaggio, Raphael and Van Gogh, not Ghandi, Che Gueva or Martin Luther King. Yet as it is often the nature of artists to notice things I noticed signs that perhaps we were all heading for the abyss. And I noticed these signs long before the abyss was even in sight, but I felt these signs were so strong that I felt compelled to try and tell people about them. And so I began making art with political content. My main message was anti-consumerism, marketing being used as propaganda and apathy. Unfortunately no one seemed to want to see or hear what I was showing and saying. Thus after 12 years, I gave up. I began to wonder if I was wrong. Perhaps I was just pessimistic and my vision of an impending disaster was never going to come. I began to think that all I was doing was being like those vagrants holding a sign saying "the end is nigh" and making a fool of myself. After all, I am only human. And so, like I say, after 12 years I gave up, I stopped protesting. And so what was next for me? The only way forward was return to my original dream of wanting to be a painter and thus I searched for a quiet corner of the world in which I could do just that. Beautiful western Norway was where I ended up and I don´ t regret it in the least.
Things went well in the beginning and after a year or so I honestly felt I was producing the best work of my life. I began to believe that things were going to be just fine and so it was OK to plan for a future. And so I began to work towards having my first real exhibition but to do that one must first get a foot in the door of the art world. My chance came in October 2008 when I was unexpectedly offered to exhibit three of my paintings in an international gallery in Oslo. Finally now, after all this time, things began to look good for me. Finally I was at the first step of beginning of realizing my dream.
But we all know that life has strange way of biting you in the ass just when you think you have it all worked out. And boy did I get bit in the ass. For on the very day I was in the gallery hanging up my paintings came the dreaded news of the financial crash. A strange sense of doom came over Oslo city. It as as though everyone knew deep down knew that things were going to get really really bad. The gallery owner came to have a talk to me and told me not to expect any sales as he had already heard that people who had money, his rich art collector customers, were now running for the hills. He prediction was right, I actually did not sell a thing. In fact I was not alone because for an entire month hardly any art was sold in the city and afterwards came the long drawn out decline in art sales which has never really recovered to this day.
So there I was having my first big break in an international gallery, in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and now my dream was in pieces caused by the very disaster I had feared and spent 12 years of my life warning people was going to happen. After the exhibition was over, I was told that many art collectors were "blown away" by work but had said "I am just not buying at this uncertain time".
Was I angry. Damn right I was !
I don´t know, you tell me, should I have carried on fighting? Perhaps! But would it have changed anything? And please remember that while I was fighting I was also struggling just to earn a living. And while I was producing political art works in protest against the "system" (as Adam Curtis calls it), all my friends were going on holidays and buying cars. So Mr Curtis, I agree with your hypothesis but I don´t think you can accuse me of not trying don´t throw me into the same basket as artists to played the game and pandered to the pockets of the rich. If you want to something or someone to blame it is the game itself and this game is called greed.
And now here I am, and here we all are together, 30 years later . I am still struggling to make it as an artist and the art world is in an more of a mess than ever but for different reasons. However, as I said. such is the nature of the artist to notice things, and once again I begin to notice things, signs here and there. And these signs are telling me that things are changing. Not necessarily meaning for the better but at least change is coming and without change time and life become stagnant. If life is a voyage on ship, then we have all been drifting for a long time going nowhere. Whether we are heading for another abyss I do not know, but I will say this, just lately, I have glimpsed hope on the horizon because for the first time in long time I can at least see a direction. And that direction is suggests reality instead of a game. Considering my unwanted reputation for predicting things, (I also predicted Trump would win right at the very beginning). I predict we are heading for a period were people will want honesty and integrity back as part of the daily existence, a more truthful life, for the game is about to end and reality is about ti begin. May be not today, may be not tomorrow, but soon and when it comes....well, one must prepare for it.
Oslo, October 2008 (my first exhibition) on the very day of the financial crash