BennyTheJudge

it goes to prove that offering freebies is good for business. had the hayward gallery not offered a free documentary by Jeremy Deller on Depeche Mode fans, I would have never paid 10GBP to view his (and David Shrigley’s) show at the Hayward Gallery. “Our hobby is Depeche mode” (no direct link possible, click on the icon) is a documentary on deranged Depeche mode fans. Deller’s point of view is different, apparently the love for this band and its members has collided historically with the “fall of the wall” and the demise of the “evil communist eastern block”, however i couldn’t help thinking that if these people were so desperate to be free to cultivate their pathological obsession with this band, then perhaps the “evil communists” were actually trying to help them. The most emblematic and powerful case is the German family with children where the father has imposed on the family, including the innocent children, to dress like Depeche mode in their videos and to spend their lives re-enacting those videos. There is a poignant point in the documentary, someone, I think the Iranian kid, says something like “you guys in the west give for granted simple things like dressing the way you want to dress or listening the music you want to listen, but in Iran or in oppressive regimes those simple freedoms don’t exist and you could be beaten, imprisoned and killed for listening to Depeche mode music”. Sure at first sigh this is something that hit at the heart of the westerner and of his pride for the democracy, the freedom of speech, the freedom to vote and all of this. personally I’d say: look closely.. sure we have simpler lives from that point of view and i can write this stupid blog today, but ask yourselves: is it really for free? do we get this “freedom” for free or are we having to pay a price for it? is there a subtler less visible way of oppressing people? hasn’t this freedom also got boundaries, limits which cannot be pushed?

interestingly enough, if you pay the 10GBP and visit the Deller show, you will find a couple of works by the same artist/researcher which show an example of how our freedoms might have appeared shiny and glittery across “the wall”, but sometime was instead bloody and painful.

Another of Deller’s works is the re-enactment  (no direct link, click on the icon), of the so called battle of Orgreave, the bloody clash between miners and police (and apparently not just police) during the UK miners strike in the ’80′s. As highlighted by Deller’s work, this was not just any clash between picketing miners and police, this was part of a strategy to undermine and destroy the power of unions in general and to break the solidarity of workers. and it was successful.

In the first pages of his “Notes from a small island”, if I remember correctly – i don’t have a copy here with me now – Bill Bryson describes the UK pre-Tatcher as a real socialist country. Not the land of Waitrose and Tesco and extreme consumerism. The changes that the country has undergone since the 1970′s are dramatic and destroying the unions and the rights of workers was perceived as a priority and so it was.

Since then neoliberalism has become the mandatory policy for all countries on Earth, and it has defined the borders of our freedoms and those who have tried to stand on its way, have been swept away with no more regards than the Iranian kids who want to play Depeche mode music and dress like their idols.

I think the most powerful recent example of how our freedoms are only a facade, they are on the suface, a thin layer of ice that easily breaks as soon as it is pushed by the most peaceful form of dissent and protest is Corey Ogilvie “I am not moving” series about police brutality against the Occupy Wall Street movement. Other example could be the oppression of the “No TAV” (in Italian) in northern italy, a spontaneous movement fighting against a high speed train project.