Monday, June 30, 2008

Dear Count Rogge,

We, members of the artists’ collective known as Grunts for the Arts, are contacting you now, at your time of need, to offer our services to you and your colleagues at the International Olympics Committee.

We appreciate that these are dark times for you, that this is an era of hardship for the IOC. The Olympic Dream is lying in tatters, and the Olympics have become a source of much controversy.

We at GFA have taken it upon ourselves to reinvent the Olympic Dream; we feel it is need of a re-brand. Should you be interested in our work, we would be very happy to take on such a role in a more official capacity.

For now however, our guidance can be summed up through two key points.

1.    If a country, as a part of its bid to hold the Olympics states that hosting the event will ‘benefit the further development of our human rights cause’¹  then make sure that it does. Continued use of detention without trial, an intensification of abuse against human rights activists and a crackdown on domestic journalism²  does not, in the rest of the world’s eyes, constitute such development.
2.    Similarly, when a country makes a bid to host the Olympics, encourage them to propose a realistic budget. As a case study, the fact that the 2012 Olympics were originally projected to cost £2.4 billion but now, when we’re still four years away from completion, has projected costs of £9.6 billion, causes a great deal of ill will amongst the populous of such countries. We appreciate that the IOC is not responsible for a country’s finance, but to undertake more rigorous analysis when bids are made, as well as to perhaps comment on the farcical situation arising as ‘money is spent like water’³  could only assist in developing a positive public image.

As stated though, such advice can be explored in depth at a later date should you wish to enter into more prolonged dialogue.

Of more urgent interest to you perhaps is our forthcoming event, London 2008, which we promise to you, and to all others who witness this letter (for we are sending a copy to all the major newspapers in England), will remain well within our budget of £100.

Grunts for the Arts also has an admirable human rights record – we have never executed any one nor imprisoned any one without charge. I’m proud to say I even offered my seat to a lady on the London Underground the other day (though she didn’t take it).

With events such as Three-Legged Hopscotch, Handbag Hurling, Footboule, Olympic Ring Discus and Grunting Relays, we are confident that we will be able to provide an afternoon of sporting endeavour and Herculean achievement.

It is of course, rather short notice, but should you, or a member of your staff, be able to make it to Butterfield Green in North London on the afternoon of Saturday 5th July, it would be a pleasure to meet with you and begin discussions as to how we can best work together in the future.

We await your response with a great deal of anticipation, and look forward to meeting you at London 2008.

Yours Sincerely,

Tim Jeeves
On behalf of Grunts for the Arts

¹  Liu Jingmin, Vice President of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Bid Committee, April 2001
²  Amnesty International report: ‘The Olympics countdown — one year left to fulfil human rights promises’
³  Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee report, ‘London 2012 games, the next lap”

There’s a whole heap of stuff that is tainting the once noble idea of the 2012 Olympics - police heavy-handedness, environmental concerns, political fibbing, financial jiggery-pokery and compulsory purchase orders that tear communities apart being a small taster of what’s going on.

But instead of expanding on such a whistle-whetting list of worries, we’re going to hope that such summarising will have stimulated your moral compass enough for you to turn towards the Gamesmonitor website.

We promise that on such a domain there are no large disembodied heads of Patrick Moore, just the work of a fantastically dedicated and very thorough bunch of folk who serve the world marvellously through providing a mine of Olympic-related information on their website.

We’re firm believers that as the intricate wonders of the world function in ways far beyond any single individual’s comprehension, it is important to not overstep the roles that fate and the history of evolution have decided for each of us.

So we’ll stick with events of athletic aestheticism - and they can provide the inspirational research.

http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/

You remember that grumpy sod who used to teach you geography? The one who had never recovered from the day that capital punishment was banned in school?
And you remember how ridiculously he would overreact to bad news, wrongdoing or comments against his good name?
Well, take his crotchety ill-temper, magnify it manifold and transform him by the wonder of your imagination into a nation state.

You’ve now got something like the political climate within China.

Fiddling tax returns, writing subversive slogans on walls, and stealing bikes are all punishable by death in China.

And you remember how this miserable teacher would be absolutely incapable of admitting that he was wrong; taking his arrogance and self-belief to such levels of absurdity that it would have been funny if tragedy and fear hadn’t dominated his classes so much?

Well guess what? China does this too.

In the late 1980s a man by the name of Teng Xinshan was found guilty of murdering his wife two years previously. He confessed to the crime, but afterwards insisted that this was only because he had been severely beaten during interrogation.

Nevertheless, he was executed in 1989.

Jump forward 16 years to June 2005 and something rather unexpected took place.

Teng’s wife reappeared on the scene. Alive and unharmed.

There had never been a murder.

China won its bid to host the Olympics in part because it promised to improve on its human rights’ record.
Very little has been done in the seven years since.

Visit Amnesty’s website to support their work towards ensuring China lives up to its word.

Well, we don’t like to focus on the miserable side of life, but you’re all grown-ups and facts do need to be faced.
So we’ll cut straight to the chase. The Olympic Dream – it’s going a bit shitty isn’t it?

In numerical order, there’s the escalating executions in the lead-up to 2008, the escalating expenditure of 2012 and, as for 2016, well, we daren’t even contemplate the escalating exes that will be going on there.

Nevertheless, we’re firm believers that laurels should not be rested upon, only worn as head accroutrements when impersonating ancient Greeks and so we’ve dared to do a little dreaming ourselves. And this dreaming of ours has led the collective grunting heart to settle on a bold aspiration.

We want to reinvent the Olympic dream, redevelop the conceptual space around sport as the city space around us has been redesigned and if this should redress the inequalities of the world then that would be truly tip-top. If not, then well, at least we might have some fun in the process…

As we are wont to do, we have gathered an assemblage of artistic sports events, creative competitions and crazy games each of which will allow the world to see itself in new ways through athletic lenses of our own artistic construction.

Despite alternative locations being previously advertised, we have decided to return to our roots and hold our event in the park. Or rather a green.

Butterfield Green in Stoke Newington to be precise (check the map on the home page for directions and whatnot). We’re still overjoyed to be working with Rational Rec, who will be celebrating the completion of their third season with a picnic and performances from The Calculators and Felicity Mukherjee. Events will be kicking off from 12, and a suitably timely table of events can be seen below.

As is wont at our events, take these times as a guide only: we try our best but sometimes we just get caught up in the athletics of it all and time moves at a faster pace than anticipated…

In an attempt to keep (running) track of time, Siobhan McAuley will be punctuating the day, at 20 minutes past the hour, every hour, with a slow-mo so-lo on-the-spot sprint. We will also have a Medaling Children (and Adults) area where the prizes for the awards ceremony will be made, and in The People’s Olympics you get your chance to state what events should be held where when the Olympics come to town.

It’s going to be bloody marvellous - We really can’t wait to see you!

Once there was the Arts Council, and the Arts Council was good.

It funded the arts nicely and whilst all the people weren’t happy all the time, and there was never going to be enough money to fund every artist’s project – there was a cosy budget of £83 million for a year’s worth of project funding.

This golden age was the 2006/7 financial year and the fund was known amongst the faithful as Grants for the Arts.

But then disaster and cataclysm descended. The powers that be decided that they should redirect £625 million of Lottery Money from its Good Causes fund (the Arts Council, English Heritage and Sport England) in order for the 2012 Olympics to remain within its ever-escalating budget.

This devastation included an immediate 35% reduction in Grants for the Arts money to £54 million in 2007/8.

Shock, fear and outrage descended on the arts community and with the governments Comprehensive Spending Review only a matter of months away, there was a real sense that further cuts would ensue.

Within a matter of months, the Arts Council had a monumental shakedown of its regularly funded organisations – even, some say, disregarding its own policies and procedures (http://www.thebookseller.com/news/50922-dedalus-to-sue-arts-council.html).

Magnificent institutions such as Chisenhale Dance Space, Total Theatre, Station House Opera and the National Disability Arts Forum (amongst many tens of others) – were stripped of their regularly funded status and left to sink or swim in the much harsher climate of non-statutory and local government funding.

Of course, many esteemed and worthwhile organisations gained funding, or even received an increase in what they were already receiving. And it would be only the most foolish amongst us who would suggest that once granted RFO status, an organisation should forever remain that way.

But to mismanage these shifts in such calamitous fashion, and so soon after the dismal reductions to Grants for the Arts funding, has alienated the Arts Council hugely from those who they should be supporting and allowed a bleak and chillsome climate to settle upon the sector.

We at Grunts for the Arts would never dare make such a suggestion, but some have been so bold as to wonder if there wasn’t certain strings attached to the CSR increase – that perhaps governmental interference lies behind the Arts Council decision to focus on ‘Excellence’ (read product and output) and to move away from experimentation, innovation and process.

This, friends, is the landscape that artists now find themselves in. In disagreement with those who are supposed to be their allies, their once wealthy (or at least wealthier) world lies in ruins around them and those seers amongst us, as they look towards the distant hills of the future, can see only grey misery and dark clouds on the horizon.

But don’t be miserable. Grunts for the Arts – like the Phoenix - will rise again from these ashes. A shining beacon of goodness and belief we stand proud for all to see.
And whilst we can’t make money return to where it was once given so generously, we can play sport, and we can make art, and we will do both in particularly splendid ways.

The hulking yet dainty entity known as Grunts for the Arts, made up of a multitude of interdisciplinary artists, has come together, operating with a collective hive intellect, in direct response to the manner in which grassroots activity is too often overshadowed by large-scale commercial projects and enterprise.

Their every action is guided by a passionate and heartfelt certitude in the value of holding up athletic phenomena to the inquisitiveness of the artistic mind, creating artworks and sporting events both novel and accessible, inspirational and jollifying.

A dream lingers, wisplike, as the backdrop to all they do – a dream of a world populated by hybrid forms of sport and art, where individuals and groups are thrust onto an unfamiliar common ground in which heightened experiences of sporting artistry thrive.

So Sports Day had been, gone and impressed all with its decidedly sodden but resoundingly successful attempts at artistic retraining.

Anticipating the summer that has been that of 2007, we bided our time, we kept our heads low, we couldn’t be bothered to think of anything dramatically new, and then, following the dampest, most miserable summer of the last three or four, we sprang forth and indulged in our favourite pastime on the last warm and sunshiney day of the year - September 15th.

Not wanting to be Londoncentric - the effects of the cuts (and therefore the need for retraining) can be found in the whole of the country - we had at first wanted to go elsewhere in our green and pleasant land but, since logistically this proved too difficult, we thought we’d make a compromise and have our second outing in South London.

Which we did.

Once again, below are some photos for your perusal, below that is (or soon will be) a list of winners, and there may even be some video documentation coming your way if you’re lucky!

So, without further ado - on with the documentation!

The Events

The Awards

(All photos: Dominic Howe)

Artshub
Point your browser at http://www.artshub.co.uk/uk/news.asp?sId=158479&ref=  and you can read some preamble to our first forage into the realm of sporting art.

The Guardian
Lyn Gardner’s writ some stuff here.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/05/fighting_arts_cuts_with_fun_an.html

The jury’s still out as to whether she was including herself in with those people who think our endeavours are ‘a bit of silliness’, but being charitable people we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and not be little sulkers.

Hackney Gazette
No link this time, unless you count clicking on the little picture below.

BBC World Service
Unfortunately we have no transcripts, pod casts, or streaming radio for you, but if you can take our word on the matter, we did have an interview with the World Service, and a very nice man came down to give updates back to the studio throughout the afternoon of the 26th May.
So 159 million people heard about the cuts to the Arts Council, and more importantly, 159 million people heard about us.
To this day, there’s probably people in Papua New Guinea kicking themselves for not making it down to Hackney Marshes.

Optimistic Productions
A very nice film crew from Optimistic Productions came down as well.
They filmed stuff, interviewed people and the cameraman even got hit by a hurled handbag. Quite what they’re going to do with the documentary footage they gathered is uncertain, but if nothing else, it may be discovered by future archaeologists and held up as evidence of turn of the century pastimes.

Time Out
Moving on to the second of our days of sport, and we have the below from Timeout.
As with Lyn Gardner (see above) we’re trying not to be too bothered by the description of our endeavours as ’silly’ but we must confess that at times it does get a little depressive.
Why are we the only ones that see our work as high art?