The difference between art and ornamentation is provocation. If it provokes thoughts, feelings, actions, opposition – anything but indifference – it is art. (Me, personal communication)
London is art.
I wander around the city, from pillar to post, from juxtaposition to juxtaposition.
It has a lot of pillars and posts – old and contemporary, pretentions and utilitarian, faux Greek and real concrete.
I peel it layer by layer: Shiny facades concealing ruins, ruins prepared to be reorganised, rebuilt, repurposed, reabsorbed into nostalgia for the past or hope for the future.
Only dead cities are immutable – monuments to past hopes of individual success and current delusions of national grandeur. Gravestones.
Living cities have to consist of ruins, it is a process of recreation, flux and flow of people and things, moving between loss and hope, provoking innovation and outrage.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Leonardo da Vinci
You are a work of art, you are my voice combined with yours, a self-creating song. I will abandon you, but not by choice. You’ll sing the song yourself before too long.