Jeremy Deller: Joy in people

At the Hayward Gallery, a recent exhibition displayed an endless stream of consciousness — shared or assumed — fueled by stories, photos, videos, archival documents, news, personalities and experiments that are almost anthropological.

Art isn't about what you make, but about what you make happen. — Jeremy Deller.

Here, the word happen calls to mind a performative dimension giving life to what is suggested by the etymology of the word event: something that takes shape, something that emerges.

Many of Jeremy Deller's works are born as demonstrations, things that have happened — gathering memories and preserving traditions in a place like England, that even today bases part of its political iconography on the gestures and styles of certain forms of traditional theater. Deller, catalyzer of large collective histories and director of complex dramas, uses that very theater to convey his message.

At the Hayward Gallery, the exhibition Joy in People contains a substantial number of his works; it is an endless stream of consciousness — shared or assumed — fueled by stories, photos, videos, archival documents, news, personalities and experiments that are almost anthropological. It's like entering a complex television format.

Like an anthropologist or an ethnographer, the British artist, winner of the 2004 Turner Prize and already selected for the Venice Biennale of 2013, has, throughout his career, undertaken a long journey: first and foremost through the UK, from which he continues to draw the vital lymph that is so valuable for his work — which is not only the mirror of British popular culture and its deep traditions and attitudes, but is also a way of portraying a country through its folk traditions. These are charged with visual and sonorous power: rock, pop culture, acid house, passions like wrestling and its incredible characters, carnival parades, parades, brass bands.

Top: Jeremy Deller, <i>Exodus</i>, 2012; above: <i>It Is What It Is</i>, 2009 — Top: Jeremy Deller, *Exodus*, 2012; above: *It Is What It Is*, 2009

Deller's explorations never cease, and are often condensed in projects that emphasize political and civil content — even outside Anglo-Saxon confines. Like in America, a country that he got to know directly through Andy Warhol, and from which he brought back a relic from the Iraqi war. A car destroyed by the explosion of a suicide bomber in Baghdad in 2007 was paraded around the US for two months. Like an itinerant museum, that piece of scrap metal bore and spread the stories of Iraqi civilians and the US military, becoming a place for discussion and debate, giving voice to those who experienced the war firsthand. Deller has revived this dialogue in one of the rooms of the Hayward, transformed into a meeting room — complete with sofa and coffee table — in which the narratives of eyewitnesses and survivors alternate.

<i>So Many Ways to Hurt You (The Life & Times of Adrian-Street)</i>, 2010 — *So Many Ways to Hurt You (The Life & Times of Adrian-Street)*, 2010

The image of destruction recurs, despite his unstoppable and recognizable pop approach. It is enough just to pause in the room devoted to the reconstruction of the Battle of Orgreave, perhaps his most epic work. The film An Injury to One is an Injury to All (2001), co-directed — not coincidentally — by Mike Figgis, is the living representation of an historical event, here mostly reconstructed through documentation from news reports, photos and maps dating back to 1984, the same year in which George Orwell's Big Brother controlled and punished Socing dissidents. In real life England, under Margaret Thatcher, Yorkshire miners clashed in one of the bloodiest strikes in British history that involved more than one thousand people, including miners and police; the clash is revived by Deller's staging, retracing the salient moments in the battle, including survivors and new volunteers.

Each of Deller's works proposes a sentimental, yet light vision, insofar as they delve deeply into the most mystical forms of customs and folklore. Not only does he allow us to view a fact, a situation, a trend, but he helps us imagine the process and the motives that led to it. Deller does not choose a single role; at different times he is artist, producer, director, playwright, organizer of parades or concerts. His method is to bring people together, guiding them in creating works that can narrate a territory and the complex relationships that link it to its culture. All of this often happens in a totally naïve way, which is conceived and studied with great sensitivity.

Each of Deller's works proposes a sentimental, yet light, vision, insofar as they delve deeply into the most mystical forms of customs and folklore

<i>Valerie's Snack Bar</i>, 2009 — *Valerie's Snack Bar*, 2009

Like the choice to investigate the sociological aspects of pop music through the fans of Depeche Mode, giving rise to Our Hobby is Depeche Mode. Co-directed with Nick Abrahms, the video is the result of an trip throughout the world: America, Mexico, Iran, Brazil and Eastern Europe, where, for example, a young community — recently liberated from the impositions of the dictatorship and with a deep craving for transgression — sees the band as a form of freedom and social emancipation. "It is a kind of folk history," says Deller; an experiment that shows how people take possession of pop culture and incorporate it into their daily lives.

The exhibition opens with a reproduction of Deller's childhood room (Open Bedroom c.1988 - c.1994), the place where he concentrated his obsessions; it closes with a 3D video installation that reproduces millions of bats flying out of a cave towards the light of dusk.
It occurs to me that the same passion is manifested by Jonathan Franzen in an even more radical way; the American birdwatcher who, on the other side of the ocean, continues to narrate another piece of history.

<i>The History of the World</i>, 1997 — *The History of the World*, 1997

Jeremy Deller: Joy in people

At the Hayward Gallery, a recent exhibition displayed an endless stream of consciousness — shared or assumed — fueled by stories, photos, videos, archival documents, news, personalities and experiments that are almost anthropological.

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