Its hard not to acknowledge the hot weather in the UK as some kind of miracle but with the hot weather come the Barbe-ques, the big shorts and the flip-flops in a way that only a daylight-deprived mole would welcome. The atmosphere is palpable. It has been six months since I moved back to London and a year since coming back to the UK. Financial markets have swung and subsequently collapsed and Presidents have come and gone (Out with the Old, In with the New!) and the jobs of many of my friends have evaporated into thin air without them even realising it. Change is never easy. I am reminded of the maxim Crises Precipitate Change. The hard part though has only just begun.
In cash-strapped societies where credit cards hang like bad smells over the heads of shoppers the act of trying to cancel a card where the credit limit has been reached is a feat of endurance, dexterity and creative thinking. As soon as you manage to clear the outstanding balance another £50 is added, for interest on a balance before it was cleared, phantom interest, interest on nothing, on money that isn’t there but once was, in the past, way back, long ago…
I have just managed to pay off a credit card that has been with me for as many years as I have been travelling back and forth to Japan which is nearly nine years. The feeling of removing the voice that constantly reminded me of what I owed was a relief, a satisfaction beyond words. I was, however, greeted but an apparition in the form of ‘interest’. Needless to say the scissors will come out as soon as I have negotiated the phantoms of hidden costs and charges, nine years worth of ghosts and spectres waiting to be exorcised from my credit agreement.
We feel the cost of a financial hegemony in the shape and form of Penny markets. Marks and Spencer’s held their 125 year anniversary by holding a Penny Market, handfuls of items all sold for only 1 pence (¥1.5). It’s success would be measured by the hoards of work-shy enthusiasts descending on Oxford Street on a Wednesday afternoon to empty the bargain bins and relieve them of socks, pants, mugs and the odd handkerchief, essential items for your Survival In the City.
The Contemporary Art Bubble was popped or at least deflated when examined within the role of art markets and the decline of world economy, how little if anything touches it, persuades rich billionaires not to invest in thirty Andy Warhol screen prints at time or buy the entire Damien Hirst back catalogue. The reality (though the Art world isn’t that ‘real’) of such artists seems to suggest that Gallery owners bid for work they already own, that some artists can create consortiums, of which they are part of, to buy the most expensive of their own collection and then claim to be dollar millionaires by the success and demand for their own work. I suppose this is classic stock-market trading played in the guise of a soap-operatic Shakespearean play, or Korean drama.
( “I am rich! I am rich!.. but I only have £5 in me pocket right now, buy me a coffee” )
I’m not sure where this is leading me but I suppose the conflation between us as creative thinkers and mere debt-ridden modern citizens is strengthened when we see ourselves as victims within the great opera being played out before us all. Banks come and go and governments and politicians (those claiming allowances or not) end up sticking their own feet in the own mouths. The truth or at least the conclusion I see myself coming to is that managing ourselves as creative individuals is going to be the one thing that will enable us to turn a corner and move beyond the nonsense of what everyday life is presently turning into.
Oslo here I come!