Rant 51: The Revolting Student

Perhaps because we are now almost too old to be eligible for the Turner Prize and are also at ages where we have a first year student son in a Scottish university, I find my perspective on both subjects of Susan Philipz winning the Turner Prize and the student situation in England will make me sound like a grumpy menopausal git. On students: Ex-pat Glaswegian Ms Philipz could have used this as an opportunity to point out that in Scotland where tuition fees are still free - we have a situation where the Scottish Parliament has now drastically capped places available in universities and colleges to Scottish residents and departments and jobs are going in their droves. In effect this means that bright Scottish would-be students are unable to study here and that universities are having to take as many International students as they can and academic standards are dropping enormously throughout the Country. Most of the British students attending our son's university are there because their parents are rich enough to bank roll them for four years of partying and consuming as much alcohol as they can get down them - in order to buy them time and the now dubious qualification of a degree. In England however the universities may be able to up their game again now at least. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds will have all sorts of packages that the libs have ensured - that will make going to university a far better option than going on the dole - as Scottish would-be students are now having to do. And sorry but it just gets up my nose to see Master Pink Floyd clambering up the Cenotaph flag in designer clothes, claiming ignorance of what it represents, despite being an extremely well-heeled young History student at Cambridge?

And from one sickening jamboree" to another - yes the Turner Prize made me want to puke this year.  It was the fact that it was stated during the live footage several times that in "controversially" choosing a sound artist this year, the Turner Prize people hope to get the public's interest back that we found so nauseating. Whatever happened to choosing on grounds of talent first and foremost? And again maybe I have a different outlook - as the sister of two profoundly deaf women, both art lovers - but I really feel that this prize should always go to a visual artist of some description (and yes I know that sound art is a respected form - so let it have its own prize then instead of hijacking another?). On the late show - or some culture programme - one young panelist said that she felt this sound piece to be somewhat arrogant in it's creation because the sound of the Jacobean song filled each room of the Tate Britain -meaning that all the work of all the other nominees was compromised. That would have infuriated me. So with only a few months left we T&Ps say no thanks Turner people - even for 25K to put towards our children's educational futures. Actually perhaps the time has now come for a return to artist apprenticeships of old? I would like to see apprenticeships of all kinds being favoured over college for all sorts of skills and disciplines. If I'd had to pay to study art and put up with the majority of my peers coming from relatively wealthy, middle-class homes, sloping in at 10am with hangovers after a night of scheming how to be just controversial enough to win the Turner Prize after graduation - I would have thought twice about how go about becoming an artist.

Dear Jim,

Thank you for an interesting piece of writing.

When considering some of the content, I find it difficult to be convinced that it does justice to the strength of feeling amongst protesters, how well informed and committed the majority seem, how harshly they have been treated by the police and media, nor the enormity of their cause.

Parallel to the press coverage of current protests; there are images and information I didn't use of the photographed event axis has chosen to include alongside your text. Ironically these are images of the young people looking like they are covered in blood.

If there were not protests and occupations of Universities and major galleries at a time when the Arts and Humanities are being culled and made impossibly elite; that would leave me far more concerned about the art students and artists we have currently at large.

All the best,

Lee Simmons

As Jim points out, these demonstrations have come far too late in the day to make any difference to how further and higher education is paid for - because the privatisation of all further and higher education in England had already kicked in under New Labour. Of course education should have been a total priority to all governments from pre-school upwards  - but as many people now pay for their children's education from the outset, we start from a position of profound inequality. By the time the young reach their teens the huge discrepancy in opportunities has already become almost insurmountable - the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's government. But it was the Labour government who passed the bill that privatised university education in England and there were no significant protests then. And so to me, at a great distance admittedly, and being at the mercy of the media portrayal for the most part, that the recent revolt appeared to be somewhat farcical - at least where the arts and education are concerned.  Of course it is crucial that the right to demonstrate peacefully should be upheld in any democratic society. This would appear to me to be the most important revelation that emerged from last week's events - that it seems that it is no longer possible for the police to do their job impartially, without resorting to wholly unwarranted violence? This is what we should all be revolting about now surely.

I think the art students that protested at the Tate probably do want to be part of the jamboree. I think that is the point.

It was about supporting the established system of arts education, galleries, museums and funded cultural activity in the UK which is under such a severe threat. It wasn't about being anti-establishment.

They don't want the arts as a whole, and art education specifically, to be decimated to the point where there is no career trajectory for them to aspire to, or more importantly those that will follow them

Or for that matter for the initial entry to that trajectory to be entirely based on the ability to pay astronomical fees. It is highly unlikely an arts graduate will ever be a high-earner.

You have to remember that the students that are demonstrating are already at art school, are already saddled with huge debts but don't want their successors having to cope with three times that burden.

They also feel passionate about the arts in general, and that for me was what was specific about the Tate protest.

They wanted to make a noise about it, and so they took it to the place where they knew people would be listening. And they were, on the Channel 4 News to be precise. And in the Tate itself.

It was notable to me that whilst those at the Turner Prize paid lip service to supporting the protest, none of them actually put down their champagne and joined the students prior to the prize giving, but afterwards Nicholas Serota and Angalika Sagar (The Otolith Group) went out to speak to the protesters. 

I thought the protest was excellent and congratulate those that organised it. It used the media, Twitter, You Tube to get a message across.

I believe that effective protests need to use the language of the people that you want to listen, otherwise the door is closed too quickly.

This was apparently handed out at the time:

'The Turner Prize Teach-in

We are here because:

The Turner Prize needs art schools

The Tate would be empty without art schools

We are not just fighting fees we are fighting philistinism, culture is invaluable

Education should be free for all, not a product for purchase

We act in solidarity with public sector workers

www.artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com'

While we have private schools we will always have a powerful upper-middle class that dominates politics, the media and the arts. If we followed the Dutch system of having education vouchers for all citizens we wouldn't have Etonians etc having this cultural monopoly and this debate would be more genuinely fruitful - and the entire populace better educated in the broadest way. But while we have an extremely divided society I think Lucy is right to point out that we have to work with within existing perimeters.

 The dog has already bolted I'm afraid. As a recent graduate of the MFA here in Glasgow I saw at first hand how institutions are being diminished by short termism. Its all about the money, with students and lecturers caught in the middle of the dash for dollars. Furthermore professionalism is slowly strangling the arts community, with too many people eyeing the prize. By this I mean that art schools are full of those who want to succeed at all costs, which usually means kowtowing to the latest fashionable 'direction'. Art is not immune (far from it) to the blandishments of fame, money, media bullshit and all the rest. All those gimlet-eyed wannabee's filling in their application forms, getting themselves on influential committee's, shagging the right (fashionable) people, its easy to be cynical! But even here in Glasgow which is awash with art acolytes, there are signs that things are changing. There is a proliferation of radical art groupings who are rejecting the dead hand of 'professional excellence' or whatever it currently calls itself, taking chances instead of sticking to the script. Glasgow has been an interesting case study in this respect as it moved from its radical self-organising origins to being seen as a haven for 'art stars' and their followers. The dead hand of The Modern Institute in particular has served to queer the pitch up here. Reading certain recent histories of the city might lead you to think everything is hunky dory, that 'success' in the Turner Prize translates into something meaningful. It does not. The 'Glasgow Miracle' is total bullshit and has only served to pave the way for a deregulated, lottery-driven farrago. The best thing about the recent student protests was the joyful insurrectionary moment. Everything else is just bollocks.

 I might have to form a new radical art group called 'The Dead Hand' now!

 your right Lee, but I think the process of capitulation to the market has long been going on in our educational establishments, protest is always hopeful especially when it dispenses with the cant of the political elite! But art schools are changing fast and not for the better. Think 'targets', 'modules', 'transferable skills', 'entrepreneurship' etc etc. And yet art schools are still 'good' places to be, mainly because of the way the staff (but not the management) continue to give wholly of themselves in the face of malicious micro-management and all the rest. Maybe it is time to look beyond 'art school' and find a new model that dispenses with the system of degrees and the attendant professionalism? The two have never really sat well together anyhow and now that 'specialism' has been (in my eyes anyway!) discredited maybe we need to move on to a less hierarchical and more inclusive model?

 hahahaha such spleen! love it T&P! Weirdly the people in art school these days (with a few honourable exceptions!) are incredibly focussed, particularly on the MA. I expect a good few of them were from wealthy backgrounds when I was there (it was quite hard to tell) but this seemed to mean that they worked harder than everyone else! I suspect this is down to the aforementioned 'professionalism' that comes from being members of the ever-striving middle class! True posh people probably lounge about being 'bohemian' along with those in the lower classes... Mind you on point of principle I could never say no to 25K! Do I look stupid?

 mmm all of that is true as far as it goes, but that means that the rioting hordes were speaking the correct language after all... and it blew the doors open! If they had meekly strolled around the streets inanely chanting then they would have been utterly ignored by a politically-biased media. The real point of the demonstrations was not to force change on the political establishment, it was to force change onto a supine, depoliticised student body! Radicalisation is the point, not career paths etc. That is why we are all getting so excited! And of course in the process the police are exposed as what they really are - truncheon-wielding goons for the powers that be.

 I was going to add that they should have invaded the prize-giving and thrown paint over Phillipsz, but maybe chucking a speaker at her would have been more appropriate . . .

 but one made of custard...

Perhaps a protest of deaf art lovers should have knocked down the doors and signed rudisms at her for hijacking a visual arts prize? If anther one such crops up next year I'll do my best to generate enthusiasm in that small but vocal sector. Nice to find a fellow free spirit to vent spleen with anyway Jim. And if we weren't about to be too old I would suggest that the time is nigh for an embroiderer to win - but it would probably do our collaborative heads in to see this happen at last with us excluded from the running. No better to let embroidery be the last bastion of true revolution somehow!

But are there a number of different protests concurrently rippling through the country I wonder? The protests you are referring to here are the ones out on the streets, in Millbank and Parliament Square - not the one at the Tate.

The one at the Tate did hijack the media (to an extent, but not entirely) but did not end in violence or arrests. I was fasciniated to see how differently the students at The Slade conducted their occupation to the students at Leeds University, UCL and Manchester (to name a few). Leeds certainly weren't doing a daily performance that was filmed and up on You Tube each afternoon!

Different approaches to a similar problem?

This, I think, is very interesting and I believe pluarlity is key. The professionalisation you describe of the previously radical art scene in Glasgow has led, in turn to a new radicalisation, a new visual and critical language that has emerged in response to (or despite of) the establishment and status quo.

I agree that the exciting thing is the new awareness of students, the shedding of apathy. But I also think that the expression of this politicisation should be plural; there will be many fights in the next few years and they will need to embrace many different forms of protest and come from a variety of perspectives.

The radical left must be careful not to fracture the opposition to the fees and cuts so much that divided we fall.

 yes! plurality and a recognition of past failures and the reasons for them, i.e. leftist infighting and ideological blinkers.

My ears are working fine right now, but yes, in my mental dimness, the light of your comments shine brightly... A Visual Arts Prize, indeed.  And for those who cannot access the sound... You are right...  Tis NOT right!  It doesn't sound good to me. 

I have to add, I find your contributions frequently enlightening....I would love to hear you speak in person....! Rant on, victorious!  The victory is in the speaking, the defeat in the silence! March on!