Carbon Silicon HMV My Inspiration shot
Went to the art opening of this show last night and had a great time, everyone was really great and we were treated to some great live music. Its a great show a real eclectic collection of wonderfull Rock n Roll stuff – magazines,films,photos,toys and in a great venue definately one not to miss.
Mick Jones as a pop-artist occupies the space Robert Rauschenberg once described as being ‘in the gap between art and life.’ Mick Jones in the frame of popular culture is more often viewed for his seminal part in the complex creative crucible that forged The Clash. Yet both Jones and Strummer were products of the English art school system (Jones at Chelsea, Strummer at Central,) both recognised the applied power of word, graphic, image, and importantly the fusion of the three.
Just as arts-school students are encouraged to keep a scrapbook, Jones began his passion for collecting well before he formed the Clash, a creative fusion he continued after that epic band’s implosion to the present day. In a lock up in Acton resides over 30 years of Jones’s influences it is an Aladdin’s cave of near 10.000 objects- which includes Clash artwork, self designed stage wear, and creative notes, curious objet d’art to the mundane- a rare collection that’s never fully seen the light of day.
Mick Jones now views this collection as a larger work in progress. Equally in the back of his mind rest haunting thoughts that his creative legacy might one day be diminished, undermined by inclusion into the likes of the 02 British Music Experience. Jones however is adamant that “anyone should have access to this material free.” To resolve the paradoxes of fame- value, reference, historic curiosity- Jones has resolved to defy expectation and create an on-going artwork: The Rock n Roll Public Library.
‘Rock n Roll’ and ‘Public Library’ shouldn’t mix, one phrase is brash, loud the other sedate and quiet. Yet these two cultures are about to collide. For the first time since the 1850 Library Act that much loved British institution the public library is about gain a loud, revolutionary 21st Century companion.
The location for the ‘site-specific’ Rock n Roll Public Library (the first near complete realisation of Jones collection, partly previewed earlier at Chelsea Space) is a vacant 3000 sq ft office unit under the Westway motorway. Being an area traditionally deprived of the arts (most cultural events happen towards the south of the Royal Borough) part of the attraction for North Kensington is a renewed sense of contribution and creative influence. This is partly because Mick Jones and The Clash started their creative journey as a garage-band under the Westway. But more contemporarily is the R.R.P.L’s direct statement for today’s multi-media multi-racial urban generation.
Paraphrasing his thoughts: in the lyric 1977 Mick Jones wrote: ‘in 1977 no Beatles, no Elvis, no Rolling Stones’, likewise in 2009 Jones is reconsidering afresh today’s iconic canonisation of fame and its impact. By creating his own expressive vehicle-The Rock n Roll Public Library- Jones’s agit-prop implication isn’t for reverence or exclusively but for a communitarian artistic approach.
To aid the Rock n Roll Library’s ambition for interactivity included in the artwork’s set design is the Book2net Kiosk, the latest advance shaping tomorrow’s digital library which will allow visitors to be able to scan certain objects or text, focus their chosen image and save to memory stick for any number of future digital uses (www.genusit.com). The world’s first Rock n Roll Public Library has also enlisted local librarians from the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea to temporarily work as ‘rock n roll librarians,’ who’ll also create outreach education workshops. However perhaps the more subtle conceit is how the five-week ‘guerrilla installation’, being concurrent with time of recession, challenges, inverts, and subverts the aesthetics and expectation surrounding the meaning of collections, the legacy of fame, and Mick Jones himself.
ROCK N ROLL PUBLIC LIBRARY:2 ACKLAM ROAD, Portobello Green, London, W10 5XL
(Ladbroke Grove Underground) 18th July to 25th August 2009, 11am-7pm. Wednesday-Sunday
Westway.org
The Clash’s Mick Jones opens rock’n’roll public library (The Guardian)
