Wanton Destruction

A couple of weeks ago I smashed a telly & called it art.

I decided to break a TV set because television represents many things which are wrong with the world as I see it. TV channels are invariably controlled by companies & individuals with vast amounts of money at their disposal - it is in their interests to make sure people spend as much time as possible doing as little as possible. To that end, TV is a form of behavioural control. News & programming are controlled to reinforce the status quo; if people are watching the TV they are hearing the opinions & instructions of a few powerful people, telling them who they should want to be, who they should avoid being & who they should hate. TV makes people hate people. That makes me hate TV.

The bitter irony doesn't escape me that people consider the TV, particularly large, new sets, to be prestige items, things which improve their lives by watching or, more likely, selling them on, but I'm in no position to comment on what happens to these things. News coverage ignores or misrepresents the actions of those it deems unsuitable for the masses to see or hear. We see what those in control of our lives want us to see. This was the conceptual background to the act, the rejection of information as a weapon & an assertion that our autonomy as human beings allows us to reject what we know is harmful and destructive to our well-being.

I originally intended to kick the TV to smash it, but having tried this 3 times with no effect but bruising my toes (I later studied the fragments & found that the glass was 17mm thick) & instead resorted to using a piece of metal roughly 1 metre long. The first time I struck the TV with this, it made a dent in the glass but did not shatter it - on the second attempt I struck it 3 times before finally putting the bar through the screen, causing a most exquisite sound.

The scene was documented on video & DSLR camera using rapid shutter drive to capture each movement, pictures will be available soon.

After disposing of the TV (& exposing my friend who was assisting me to some horrible particles, for which I apologise unreservedly) I retained 3 large fragments from the screen & cleaned off the metallic film that lines the inside. I plan to create individual artworks from these fragments, such as paintings. This led me to consider the idea of reassembling the fragments of a TV screen in the box itself, with an image painted or printed onto the inside of the screen, creating the illusion that the TV is still operational. I will experiment with an appropriate image on another television, which will necessitate the deployment of a big, heavy piece of metal.

This was done in a safe environment, with no risk of repercussions beyond a possible mild telling off for disregarding health & safety. I was wearing black clothes & had my head & face covered. Showing the photographs at a group critique a few days after the event, it was noted that when people cover up like this it suggests that they have something to hide, and that they are doing wrong. I commented that what was 'wrong' was not necessarily what was 'illegal', a flexible label in any situation. I thought the difference between 'wrong' & 'illegal' is a fair definition of 'politics'.

The reasons for wearing face coverings are well documented on activist web sites, and clearly evident when we see that people with faces uncovered in protest situations, not necessarily those proven to have committed any crime, are posted on the front pages of newspapers & on TV - an incitement to grass up fellow working class people & use prejudice as a punishment.

It is safe to assume the TV & metal bar used to be part of an artwork, the defunct TV was due to be chucked out. The bar was several pieces welded together - two long bars parallel to each other & u-shaped rods connecting them. I do not know the history of the artworks but I did bear in mind that I was using ex-art to create a new artwork. A concept which it would be sensible to note.

My affection for destroying inanimate objects is odd odds with my personality - I'm sometimes a calm, gentle person & sometimes I haven't slept very well & get ratty with people I actually like really easily, but that's uncommon, I'm usually quite nice. hence, I had to work myself up into enough of a rage to actually mean it when I swung the bar, thinking about the destructive, parasitic nature of capitalist industry, the ruining of young peoples' future & most peoples' present, the tendency of politicians to betrayal and most especially the bullshit idea that any human being is less important than any amount of money. That makes me want to break stuff, cos human beings are my favourite sort of people.

Why would anyone watch the television anyway? All it does is sit there gathering dust.