There is no mystery any more. That’s what they say. In the digital age, we are consumed by data as much as we consume it. The sacred, the ritual, the unknown, the uncertainty which typified previous eras has vanished. In an era of surveillance, search engines, and social media there is nothing left for us to ponder on, no information we can’t access on our smartphones. Kick The Bucket? by an anonymous local artist*, challenges all that with a playful and yet profound piece of pop up interactive art that invites those very questions. What are those things in the yoghurt bucket? Should I take one, or all of them? Is the receptacle part of the art? Should we overcome our urge to literally ‘kick’ the work? Would this be an act of improvement or destruction? Like many Easton artworks it plays upon the idiom of street recycling as an activity whereby something useful is left for the passerby; previous examples have chosen to challenge this norm through selection of undesirable objects - such as the [in]famous Chip-pan With Congealed Oil or Upside-down Pizza King Leaflet Box both of which also appeared (coincidentally?) on the same street. And yet this example takes us further, asks more of those who care to interact with it. Once we start asking for the purpose of the items in the bucket, we are entering into a state of uncertainty, mystery; it plays on our anxious need to ‘know’ the true ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ of not just these objects - but of ourselves too. Why are we here? Who are we? What is the point of us? Deep questions indeed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * in fact my next door neighbour. Hence the low quality picture: guerrilla art street photography can be itself a fleeting and temporally-limited activity in which the photographer has little time to interact fully with the works captured
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:46:14 +0000
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