Fred Deakin: the art of change
Fred Deakin has enjoyed considerable success with his many, varied ventures over the years. Best known publicly as one half of dance duo Lemon Jelly, he is also one of the founders of Airside, a successful design studio which he retired from in 2012. These are just part of an extraordinary chocolate box of activities; others include his own work as an artist, and as a lecturer in art and design schools.
Deakin is about to add another entry to this already rather full CV. He will be facilitating and generally getting involved in No Boundaries, an event taking place in late February which will examine the future of art and culture in the UK. The legitimacy of Deakin’s appearance at the event is bolstered by his recent acquisition of a Professorship of Interactive Design at the University of the Arts London. The common, contextual thread of Deakin’s recent work and collaborations is of an ever-moving paradigm shift. No Boundaries aims to explore this: how those operating within the arts and culture sector, whether as a practitioner or commissioner, can work in ways which complement the contemporary, ultra-realist media and methods to which all of us are becoming accustomed. This doesn’t apply just to the content; it applies to everything in arts and culture, including audience engagement and the old chestnut of funding.
In talking with him early one morning, the fiery and forthright opinions which he gives suggest that his appearance at No Boundaries will not be without comment. His history gives him a wide range of experiences to call from. The lessons learned from other industries clearly need to be understood by, if not adapted to, the arts and culture sector.
“My baptism of fire was the music business, where Lemon Jelly was at the cusp of those changes,” he says. “Even they [the music business] would say that, in hindsight, they got it wrong and are now being dragged by the hair [in terms of change]. Some are now doing interesting things and responding well, but in terms of business, they completely messed up. The music business has had innovation forced upon it by other innovations, rather than embracing it from the ground up.
“Everyone can see that there’s a fundamental shift happening. You look around and see some interesting marketing opportunities; there are interesting people from the creative angle, definitely, and the artists are embracing it and the audiences are embracing it elsewhere but what body of work or organisation would you point out to say that these people are manifesting the future?”
Given the changes in arts patronage, funding, and audience expectations which are occurring, it’s a tough call to ask the sector to embrace seismic change at the same time. But, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. Deakin cites GOV.UK as an example of how the public sector can quickly and rapidly change from a navel-gazing view to an unrelentingly externally-focussed one; the Government Digital Service’s “Digital By Default” mantra demonstrates how a new culture can be built and fostered quickly, clearly, yet iteratively.
Out of the mainstream
While it’s easy to consider this clarion call as a way for the arts to become more involved with digital technologies and innovation, it clearly it isn’t that simplistic. Deakin’s interest is in the sweet spot where the physical mixes with the virtual; where people are empowered by technologies. He cites the maker/craft movement as an example of a community which has been empowered by the Internet, and points out that the title of his new role at UAL features the term “Interactive” rather than “Digital”. A very high quality of interaction is what audiences now want from digital-based installations, as the quality brought about by iOS in the consumer marketplace, for example, demands it.
As is evidenced in the maker movement and other small, energetic communities such as indie gaming, the interesting stuff always happens in the roots, the undertow of mainstream culture. “That’s what I have always been excited about: where you have a bunch of people driven by enthusiasm and possibility and they can see their audience in front of them, because that’s their lives, and they know instinctively what they want. We’re having conversations with those people, but… how do we empower them so they don’t say ‘Sod this, I need to get a mortgage, I will go and work for a corporate’?”
That question is why Deakin took the role. He sees collaboration between departments and organisations occurring, but the problem lies in the “siloisation” of courses. Streaming students into myopic disciplines results in work marked on the specifics of their degree, and departments have limited resources in order to expand their practice. His intention is to shake the tree of arts education; to make it more responsive to change, and to make students more responsive (and, perhaps, iterative) in terms of their approach to work.
He wants students to have absolute clarity in terms of what they want to achieve, and how to show to an audience which is always there, in a complex and often unprepared mix of passive viewing and active participation. In particular, he intends to foster a spirit of collaboration in his students: complex works — whether self-started art or working on commercial campaigns — require more than one pair of hands, after all.
Innovate or die
If we look at the wider context of digital innovation and disruption, then it clearly isn’t something which just affects the arts. While Deakin suggests that new graduates needing to make a living should probably be doing a lot of things at once as part of a “portfolio” career — coding or working in an ad agency to supplement the income from their artwork — it’s a bittersweet perception. The ideal is for artists to live for their art, digital or otherwise, but that seems to be an arrangement whose time has been and gone. The market economy is embedded into our DNA. Deakin’s observations on an increasingly commercialised Internet are perhaps at odds (at least on the face of it) with his past at Airside, but they are clearly part of a wider concern.
“Lots of good work occurs in the commercial sector, where there are the budgets available. But, most of that is used to sell products and I don’t think that Tim Berners-Lee worked on the web so I could buy better shoes or see more branding messages. That’s not the point. That’s what people love about the Internet: its democracy and its open source nature, but over the past few years, its trajectory has been towards monetisation and commercialism. The huge forces bearing down on every corner of the Internet are much more visible and influential than they were.”
The problem with that change is that is also changes the way in which the UK is perceived. Saying “Creativity is Great” is the last vestige of industrial pride; the UK remains at the forefront of the world’s creative industries, although how long for remains uncertain. For the up-and-coming artists who instinctively understand and absorb digital technologies in their practice, their problem is not making — it’s getting their work out.
“If you’re making great digital work, where do you put it? There is no context of digital creativity in existing art spaces that have a heritage, a history, of commissioning work in a much more traditional way and are looking at traditional metrics for their success. It’s a tough one. Arts funding should be much more nimble, much more native to the digital climate and I’m not sure that it is at the moment.”
With a title such as No Boundaries, we hope that speakers and participants are equipped to think outside of their own boundaries and consider Deakin’s words; it’s a time of intense structural change, and the impact of the UK’s response in terms of its cultural and creative provision and support, will only be felt in years, perhaps generations, to come.
Fred Deakin is Professor of Interactive Design at the University of the Arts, London. Information on him and his work is available at his website. He is @freddeakin on Twitter.
He will be part of No Boundaries, taking place in Bristol and York on 25 and 26/02/14. Further information is available at the No Boundaries website.
