PAID TO LIVE LIKE COMMON PEOPLE
THE artist Ellie Harrison is being paid £15,000 of taxpayers’ cash for remaining within the Greater Glasgow area for the next year – which, as luck would have it, is where she happens to live.
The idea behind the 12month ‘ performance piece’ or, if you will, ‘durational performance’ is to record the Glasgow Effect, a term used to describe poor health in certain areas of the city.
Among the diverse ele- ments we can expect to see coagulate in art form over the next year are Ellie Harrison’s reduced carbon footprint, Ellie Harrison’ sin creased sense of belonging, Ellie Harrison’s better use of ‘local opportunities’ and the Scottish taxpayer’s fraying patience. What will it look like when it is finished? Dunno. I’m not sure we’ve even been promised a finished product. Back in an earlier century, a hit song by Pulp told the story of an affluent artist from St Martin’s College who wanted to live like common people and do whatever common people do. This Creative Scotland jape sounds hauntingly similar, which is worrying because singer Jarvis Cocker’s point was the exercise was doomed to failure – only common people can l i ve l i ke common people.
A good video, at least, came out of that. WHERE are we going with music formats? I only ask because I used to have to transfer vinyl to cassette to listen in the car. When tape decks gave way to in-car CD players, the cassettes were useless. I moved to CDs; graduated to minidiscs, watched them die and moved back to CDs. Then came iPods, then iPhones did for them only a short time later. Now major car-makers are ditching the CD, all but forcing us to stream music that we have already paid for about six times over. Seriously? Think I’ll just hum from now on.