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| Photograph of Toynbee Hall circa 1902,which has nothing to do with this article (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Performance of an artist in Tokyo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| More performance art, somewhere or other (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Living statues, performance art called "Fried eggs". Europe Day celebration in Ukraine (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
A week or so ago a naked woman sat
for four hours in the cold weather of London, England, on the roof of a
building. She apparently did not arouse much interest from people who spotted
her, which must have been disappointing for her, because she was later revealed
to have been a performance artist at work.
Her name was
Poppy Jackson, she was sitting on the roof of a business called Toynbee
Studios. I immediately, speaking from my deep ignorance, confused this studio
with Toynbee Hall, one of the well-known centres in East London of charitable
works, which --- again, out of my deep ignorance --- I had always thought had
some connection to Arnold J. Toynbee, whose huge book A Study of History was one of those that, as a 19–year-old struggling
with my immense lack of knowledge, I tried vainly to read and to adopt as my
entry into the modern world.
As it happens,
Toynbee Hall was founded in 1884, and named after an earlier Arnold Toynbee,
also an historian, who died just the year after the Hall was founded. This is
somewhat irrelevant to Poppy Jackson’s noble vigil on the roof of Toynbee
Studios, an entirely separate place that
is described as a place sympathetic to the work of artists established by
something called Artsadmin, an organization I had never heard of either, but
which turns out to be a publicly-funded place that is pretty central to what is
happening in the City of London, culture-wise, if I may use the phrase.
Anyway this
circumlocution aside, Poppy Jackson’s vigil on the roof gave rise to a classic
example of what I always call “intellectual crap”, one of those explanations,
almost completely incomprehensible to the ordinary bloke, that crop up from
time to time, and deserve to be exposed and brutally put down. I have for the moment appointed myself as the
exposer.
“This piece,” (of
Performance Art), explains Toynbee Hall in a release about Poppy’s work in
sitting on the roof, “investigates questions relating to temporality, the body
in site, representation and gender through consideration of the use of the body
in performance as an activist practice.”
Hang on there
fellas, was that “the use of the body as an activist practice,” you just
wrote? I see…. The use of the body as an
activist practice…. You better continue, old man, I am not quite with you so far.
"The work
interrogates the boundaries,” the press release continues in elucidation,
“access points and interaction between 'interior' and 'exterior' categories.”
Got that,
fellas? The access point and
interaction, not to mention the boundaries, “between interior and exterior
categories” that are under interrogation.
So this is Poppy, sitting up there naked and freezing, under
interrogation just by being there, as to her interior and exterior categories.
The explanation continues (I am hoping with some easier clues as
to its meaning): “Physical action
dually presents the female body within a process of claiming
space, whilst attempting to exist itself as deterritorialised space."
Wow! I finally got it. It’s the old duality that has risen its
troublesome head, bothered on this occasion by the female body sitting up there
claiming the space, naked as a jay bird, while at the very same time trying its
best to occupy a “deterritorialised space.”
You see what I mean about your intellectuals? That’s just, so-o-o profound. These guys
sound like they should be wine writers, a field rich in intellectual
meaninglessness where a body can flop about to its heart’s content in
deterritorialized space. Right?
I hope so. But meantime, good luck to Poppy. Your career is off
to a great start, kid. If I hear of any deterritorialised space that you might
inhabit next time, I’ll let you know.
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