The Gift
The simplest works often demand the most expansive text.
The Commune and Communards of 1871 were never truly vanquished — their political imaginary and ideas lived on and are today being liberated and revived as a sociopolitical aesthetic against the worse excesses of neoliberalism.
An idea appears through research, a conversation, a walk, a fleeting thought during a daydream, an actual dream. The idea or the action or the object, the form the idea takes, is already connected in a myriad of ways to everything….it arrives complete and competes for space in an overriding philosophy that states “everything is connected”. And so it was for me with the humble cobblestone.
One of my home county Yorkshire’s most famous streets is “The Shambles” in York, a narrow medieval cobbled street lined with artisan stores and workshops. Reviews on Trip Advisor from American tourists are dangerously close to the truth, “it’s just a filthy cobbled street with shops” writes one, underwhelmed by its invisible history. "I'm sorry I didn't get this at all!” states another, bringing it closer to contemporary art than perhaps they know, "We were constantly having to look where we were walking to ensure we didn't step on someone's discarded food, drink, or worse sick!”
The etymology of “shambles” passes from a wobbly stool or market bench, through to a medieval meat stall, a place of butchery and then on to meaning a general confusion and mess. “It was an absolute shambles” being a common refrain for disorder. It was down this research rabbit hole, alongside a re-reading of David Cheal’s “The Gift Economy” - a gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards, that this idea sprung. The cobblestones of my Yorkshire childhood, met “Beneath the Pavement, The Beach”, the graffiti’ed Situationist slogan that appeared on the streets of Paris May 68 which in turn lead directly to thinking about the The Commune revolt of May 1871. The cobblestones, commonly set in sand (the beach), being the weapon of choice in the defense of the Commune against state fascism. Simple really. The question on how this “Gift” is delivered and to whom, I’ll leave to the viewer.
