So it’s over. Just under 2,500 individuals stood up to be counted for Antony Gormley’s epic public-art-by-the-public project, ‘One & Other’. Yet, after the initial flurry of media interest, the fate of at least two months’ worth of subsequent plinthers has gone by almost unnoticed. I’d nearly forgotten there were all these poor souls still lining up to be Gormley sentinels, pretending to exert their free will on their lofty, open-prison pillar by nervously preaching, posing, stripping, reading, chatting or dancing an hour away. The whimpering finale – with numerous drop-outs in recent weeks, lots of people sat talking into their phones and no one much looking back up – is a sad end to what started as an interesting, albeit lofty proposal: to find out who we are as a nation.
The empty plinth this morning
Although there surely are participants who’ll have learnt something about themselves through being exposed to the loneliness of other Londoners’ apathy or the unwanted ire of drunkards, ‘One & Other’ doesn’t seem to have revealed any fundamental existential truths. Am I just bitter because I didn’t get my 60 minutes up there? Those who did will surely cherish their moments of Warholian fame, but the rest of us didn’t miss much more than a wave of buskers, hawkers, extroverts and adverts.
As spectators it was hard to glean anything except how small we all are as individuals – dwarfed as each plinther was by Trafalgar Square’s never-ending sea of humanity – but at least our puny existences can be amplified by judicious use of technology – 24-hour live webcam feeds and Twitter updates. And there is something cheery and Blitz-spirited about all those Brits coming out whether wind, rain or shine. Shame they didn’t realise they were part of one of the biggest and most banal exercises in mass performance art ever staged.
Gormley meets the public and press at the end of One & Other
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If you were not one of the lucky people to experience the view from the plinth, you can here with this virtual tour, shots by Helen Butcher and post production by me :) http://www.vrwebdesign.co.uk/latestnews/360-panoramas/london-antony-gormley-live-art-project-statues-eye-view-in-trafalgar-square/ enjoy !
I too was on the plinth and support what is said by morethananumber. Perhaps I was lucky in having a tranquil sunset hour on an mellow Bank Holiday, but my experience was entirely positive, and comments and feedback were too. I moved very little and spoke only twice. My sister and friends handed out a brief statement of the reasons I was taking part, mainly to celebrate the unobserved but nevertheless remarkable lives of women of around my own age. No-one heckled, and feedback has been entirely positive. Some of the problems were with scale, but that is part of the interest of the project: real humans are not monumental, like artworks. Most of the problems are with people's expectations, their constant need for change and distraction. Appearing on the plinth was, for me, a means of challenging that mindset, and reminding people not always to look outwards for stimulus (whether in art or 'entertainment') but to find stillness and satisfaction in themselves and their own lives.
Surely 2 months was too long anyway? A week at most would have been best and a bit of quality control on those standing up there. Also, I assume the Americans were interested as they view England as a strange backwater, a quaint little place, where everyone knows the Queen and drives around in a black cab or a red bus. Mind you, if they had a plinth like this in New York, I'd probably be watching every day too!
http://www.skyarts.co.uk/video/video-one-other-summer-2009/ I think you should take a look at this. This is truly only a minimal selection of some of the beautiful, bizarre and moving participants that have been on the plinth. There were many more astonishing hours that made me proud to be British. This is a project that the UK should be really be proud of, yet it seems mostly Americans here that are defending this project. What a shame!
I appeared on the plinth in week 12. I planned carefully what I wanted to do, I rehearsed it and produced the work exactly as I prepared. Many people watched, from all over the world as well as in the Square. In turn, I've watched many other plinthers and enjoyed some. I wonder why some people would just stand up there texting and chatting, but if that's how they want to be seen by the world... There's a lot of carping going on, isn't there. If you didn't enjoy it, that's fine, but I wonder who has the right to say if it did or didn't work as art? Maybe only Athony Gormley knows what was intended. I know that some people found my hour moving and thought-provoking and I was thrilled to have the chance to do something unusual and memorable. Maybe other people are living lives of wild event and dramatic occasion. You can belittle what I did, but don't belittle my feelings about it,or the feelings of spectators at that hour.
I did watch every so often on the internet and was in the square sometimes. I thought it was extraordinarily dull, mundane and rather silly - no, the idea was interesting, but what the people did was mundane. Life may be like that but art shouldnt be.
Actually, as an "outsider" from the USA who was actually there each evening for roughly the last week, I saw it as a glimpse of real truth. Sure, the complaints are valid (i.e. that most of the time went wasted with unfulfilled promise) but that is exactly what life really is. We all rise to the occasion now and then, but we totally waste the majority of our time here when we think no one else is really watching... When the relentless camera continued on well past the "news worthiness" of the project, we started to see the start reality that no matter how much we all pretend otherwise, our lives are most just a slow and daunting processional towards the same bleak end. And in amongst that inescapable death march we rise above the din now and then and do something worth noticing. But most of the time we collectively do nothing and let time and our lives pass, wasted and lost forever to time and mortality until only a slight ghost of our presence is left behind. Sorry that so many of you failed to wake up to that truth. Being there in person, but not on the "plinth" itself perhaps allowed me to see it for both the good and bad a bit more clearly than the star-fucker hopefuls who wanted non stop celebrity to appear before their eyes and the stark and bitterly honest desperation of those who were found wanting by those same hopeful and desperate stares. The real story of what was going on was happening off the plinth as well. The sad truth that the homeless folks often gathered there to get a break in their desperately long and lonely days now have to crawl back into their doorways once again alone and without enough reason to reach out and connect to other humans as they did for those 100 nights. Thanks to Gormley for providing a little truth and a brief respite to the inevitable decline of us all.
Well, I won't try to prove you wrong, but twice a day at a minimum I would log onto the site and watch.. sometimes mesmerized, sometimes amused, always fascinated... and I live in California, USA. Loved it
So you found it booooring! And that was from how much viewing of it? I presume you found your thirty seconds of the 2400 hours booooring and judged the rest of it by this. This isnt criticism its twitter mindset. If its not entertaining NOW then its boooooring. You cant live your life like that because everything you do will soon become booooring. Theres no letting it seep in grabbing you slowly until you get it. The problem is YOU are really booooring!
a few years ago with "ecce homo2 mark wallinger put a life sized cast on the 4th plinth which highlighted the bold fragility of the figure, nearly 50 years ago piero manzoni made his "base of the world", a plinth which suggested that anyone could stand on it and be a work of art, that's FIFTY years ago, and he didn't actually subject us to a literal enactment. I like gormley but this project was disappointing...
In 1999 i stood on a hill and experienced the total eclipse of the sun The next day, the papers were full of variations of "what an anti-climax, it was nothing special" I've had the same feelings about the plinth detractors. There was a depth to the experience, that I'm sorry you missed, I was in the square this morning. A young 17 year old girl arrived next to me with a fiend. She burst into tears and went in to a low level of shock. She had been on the plinth the night before and it was only on returning the morning after, that she could recognise the personal enormity of what she had done. She won't be the nly one. A young man was on the plinth two hours before me, in the early morning. He told a story of some prank he and friends had got up to. "You had to be there", he said. Personally I was glad I hadn't been on that particular evening. But the words ring true "You had to be there." It was so so much more that one person on the plinth for an hour. In time, history wil show us so.
Well I did get a place up there and turned it down. The whole thing seemed like a huge prank by Gormley. I wrote about my decision here: http://bit.ly/one_and_other
I disagree. Think about all the money that has been raised for charity! I alone have raised almost £700 for FSID. It might not be art in the true sense of the word and there may not have been much mainstream publicity but I have thoroughly enjoyed the last few months, meeting new people as a result of my hour on the plinth and hopefully I educated some people on the do's and dont's surrounding cot death.
Yes! Finally an art critic has challenged the baffling consensus view that One & Other was somehow profound and meaningful and modern. It was unbelievably boring!
I couldn't agree more - what started as a noble premise has been nothing more than an expose of how unimaginative the masses are. With Big Brother also gone, hopefully now we're ready to lay the idea that the public are innately talented or entertaining to rest.
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