The Philosopher, The Rock Star and The Ancient Tradition Turned Into Digital Art.
I haven’t been to many private views but when I have, I never felt very comfortable: like a fraud, pretending to understand the Art World, without letting slip that I didn’t have much to say about form or colour. Despite feeling like art was something I should know or care about, but I never found an easy way in.
I just drank the free wine.
Art was for other people. Music was always easier to get.
You start by going to your friends’ gigs… everyone was passionate about music growing up. Our heroes were musicians, not painters. When I listened to Bowie’s lyrics about not letting the sun blast your shadows and not letting the milk floats ride your mind… whilst walking home from a club at 5am, it meant something. You could understand it. It was easy then to pick up a guitar and start writing songs.
I started writing songs about my life as honestly as I could and magically, amazingly, it clicked with a few people.. and then more people… until the band I was lucky enough to be in recorded three albums and toured around the world multiple times. The music and words meant something and you and others could understand it. In comparison…
What could a large block or wax fired from a cannon mean to me?
What if art was beautiful, meaningful and accessible?
What about art that might answer a basic human need: the need share our problems with others?
After reading the author and philosopher Alain de Botton’s ‘Religion for Atheists’ and knowing that the Brighton Digital Festival was occurring in September, I had an idea.
Well, actually it’s Alain’s idea… actually, it’s an ancient Jewish idea.
In the book, Alain transforms various religious traditions into their secular equivalent so that we can all benefit from them, not the just the chosen people (the ones who get all the invites: to private views, heaven, etc). One example is Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, where Jews write down their sorrows on pieces of paper and place them into cracks in the wall, where they hope god will answer them.
How would a god-less version of the Wailing Wall be anything other than a depressing display of hopelessness? Of desperate people, as a last resort, begging god to fix their problems when all reasonable attempts to do so had failed? Is there any comfort in such public display of sorrow?
Yes there is.
By the virtue of it being a public display, we can find comfort from the fact that none of us are free from the troubles that we are all plagued by. What might a secular reimagining of the wall look like?
“…an electronic version of The Wailing Wall… would anonymously broadcast our inner woes… The wall would offer a basic yet infinitely comforting — public acknowledgement that… none us are alone in the extent of our troubles… Among the advertisements for jeans and computers high above the streets of our cities, we should place electronic versions of Wailing Walls.”
— Alain de Botton.
We have realised the vision. We have built the wall.
Where would it be built? Where do people congregate, wait and so have time to reflect? Where they might let the troubles that we all have, bubble up to the surface and then be shared with the wall?
After lots of negotiations, we have managed to get it hosted on the giant advertising screen on Brighton Station concourse this September. So, while people are waiting, instead of yawning into their free newspapers, they can look up and anonymously post and view each others messages.
What if, instead of an exclusive private view, there was a ‘Public View’ that anyone could attend? Not in an art gallery, where 96% of the population generally avoid — but in a place that the public frequent anyway?
A pub.
We’re doing it. A ‘Public View’ will be held for all those that have contributed to building the wall by submitting a message to it.
Now my rock n roll days are over and I’ve moved into technology, I joke to Pete (the other 1/2 of Free The Trees): “Technology… where rock stars go to die”. But technology is such an explosive area, in many ways it’s a lot more creative and interesting than rock n roll. Since we launched the site, seeing how people connect to it feels like the same magic feeling you get when someone gets your songs.
Get involved. Visit thewaitingwall.com post a message and make a note of the phrase that appears on the screen. This will get you free drinks at the public view at The Cyclist venue in Brighton station from 6pm, on Thursday 10th Sept to toast all our contributions to a beautiful, meaningful and (hopefully) understandable piece of art.
Alan Donohoe (1/2 of Free The Trees, and 1/4 of The Rakes).
Thank you to: Alain de Botton for his approval; Fergus Caldus at JCDecaux for allowing us use of the Brighton Station Transvision screen; and Brighton Digital Festival for commissioning the work.
(The Waiting Wall has been made possible by Brighton Digital Festival through their Arts and Technology Commissioning programme)
