Roger L. Taylor in his 1978 book Art, An Enemy of the People came up with an excellent answer to the question: ‘what is art?’ Taylor argued that art was whatever those in positions of cultural power said was art. In 2004 I did an interview with Taylor about how his positions on art have evolved since 1979. You can read that here! Taylor’s book is way more effective at questioning ‘the meaning and legitimacy of every form of art production’ than the 1978 video piece by Rasa Todosijevic from which the current show at the Kunstlerhaus in Graz takes its title! While Todosijevic is interpreted by the Kunstlerhaus curators as making the case ‘for artists to take an even more active role in art discourse’, Taylor demonstrates the necessity of going beyond art discourse altogether so that we can actually understand what art is and what it might become if freed from cultural elitism!

UK and Brazilian (translated into Portuguese) editions of Roger Taylor’s book Art, An Enemy of the People. A very cheap English language Kindle edition of the book is available from Amazon here.

In Graz I’ve been staying in the Hotel Daniel, right by the train station. Nothing strange about this hotel at all – although there is a huge contrast between the modern design of Daniel and the very old-fashioned hotel I stayed in last time I was in Graz. These differences brought to mind my stay at the Sorrento Hotel in Cherry Hinton Road in Cambridge (England) about a dozen years ago. I was shacked up in The Fens for a week and working on various digital art works up the road at The Cambridge Junction. I left the hotel one morning and I didn’t have a great day because Tessa Jowell – who was at the time the newly appointed UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport – had decided to come in and visit The Junction to see what new media was all about. Along with two guys who worked full time at The Junction, I had to explain how the equipment we were using worked. When we said that people could access the material we were making on their computer by using a modem, Jowell looked at the besuited guys who were accompanying her and asked: “What’s a modem?”

Things remained as surreal when I returned to the hotel. I went to the door of what I thought was my room, opened it with my key and then did a double take – thinking I’d gone into the wrong suite. I rechecked the door number and found I was actually in my room, despite the fact the furniture definitely wasn’t the same as when I’d left in the morning. I looked in the new wardrobe (not the wardrobe that had been there when I’d left 10 hours earlier) and my clothes were inside it. I then when down to the reception and asked if the furniture in my room had been changed during the day and I was told that it had been upgraded! When I asked why the hotel hadn’t warned me this was going to happen before the switch around, the receptionist informed me he couldn’t answer my question. I left it at that, although I now wish I’d asked if acid casualty rock musician Syd Barrett – who at the time lived a couple of minutes walk away at 6 St Margaret’s Square – was advising the hotel on psychedelic customer care! I was, however, happy to have a new bed – as I’d not found the old one particularly comfortable!