I have been really interested in Antony Gormley's piece happening at Trafalgar Square because it encompassed all the good things and bad things about working within a community context. For starters there's the shared authorship that creates a product that is difficult to critique from a historical perspective on aesthetics. From a material perspective this work seems like a departure for Gormley. I have read about how the work is boring, highlights mundanity, is patronising and so on... In many ways I don't totally disagree, but I was still drawn to the work as its a huge public art project about participation, and luckily I was able to stand in for someone who missed their flight from Belfast.
As I'm working on the Everyman concept for the next year, I thought this would be an interesting place to doing a small intervention, and what a venue. What I found ultimately remarkable was the spontaneous community that was developed in the street. I went on at 2am on a Thursday thus faced a large amount of drunken loitering and heckling which was great. I felt both empowered and vulnerable and thought this is exactly the risk Gormley has taken. It reminded me of working in the community garden in NYC and having all sorts of obscene interventions that added to the work. It's a healthy dose of reality that I would recommend to any skeptic of the work.
One interesting character in the real stage, the pavements below, was Captain John (you can see him at about 36:36 in the video link below). He was a plinther and had since returned daily becoming part of the routine there. One of the main questions people asked when I was up there was 'what does it mean?', and it was the first question posed to me when I got down... But I wonder, does it need to mean something?
Jenna went up as well at 1pm on Saturday to much more docile crowd of tourists and locals. Many people had no idea what the plinth project was at all, and it was great to overhear all the possible assumptions. I realise that the real work of One & Other was this spontaneous dialogue amongst strangers in the street. If you're just looking up at the plinth you're missing the real artwork....
Everyman Walks the Plinth Video
Images
One & Other is a live artwork by sculptor Antony Gormley.
2,400 participants representing every region of the UK each spend an hour alone on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square for 100 days and nights.
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