Whatever Happened to the Northern Intellectual?

A fascinating kickstart to a new round of debate, by Charles Leadbetter: an essay entitled "The Art of With", which allows paragraph by paragraph comments. It's a kickstart because it will be followed by a one-day seminar and other activity at Manchester's Cornerhouse. The nature of the essay and its structure makes it wrong to try and paraphrase it, though it's relatively accessible and easy to paraphrase. (I would argue that in art, if not in criticism, our ability to paraphrase the art rather than read/watch/engage is one of the key fallouts of "accessible art" - its the art that you can't paraphrase, John Ashbery say, or Gillian Wearing, that most interests me).

But, though I'd ask you to read the original, I'll summarise a few thoughts here. The "art of with" begins with the idea that the avant garde (in itself not defined in the article: and I've a little interest in that definition) has traditionally been "separate" - rejecting the consumerism of the 20th century, but being part of arts institutions that are themselves based upon the consumerist model. Is the web, with its ethos of "shared" and "collaborative" experience a different model? Perhaps. Yet, I've asked the question before whether Fordism is alive and well in the Googleopolis - as Google's "business model" is not mine as an artist. (There's a particular thing here of course: Google wants to give away YOUR art for free, and collect the payment not for you, but by using you.) Yet there's definitely something about the modern communication infrastructure that the internet is part of which offers the artist - and the avant gardist - a chance to "up" - whether that's upskill, or upload. I'm less convinced that the "mix culture" that Leadbetter talks about - and which has been bandied around for a while as a new way of creation - is either new or edifying. I've blogged before that writers in particular (but I would say visual artists and others as well) risk becoming middlemen in the cultural value chain, rather than originators in their own right. This is not just about "influence" but about value-added. Hip hop as the original share-culture of populist art remains a vital touchstone, because it created something defiantly and definitely new, from what was already there (and unused) - often the instrumental breaks on the b-sides of old James Brown records. The cut and paste fun of say, Girltalk, is more stars-on-45 for pseuds, because the end result is not something NEW, like "Paid in Full" or "Paul's Boutique", but something reversioned. A reversioning is not a problem - but it seems somehow lesser.

But without going much further at this point into Leadbetter's article - it does raise a couple of key questions about the "creative classes". Our institutions (and their gatekeepers) remain too powerful in this sense. The real lesson of "open source communities" is that they are outsider communities, one way or another. It's almost an impossible paradox talking about the UGC communities coming out of mass-market products like Flickr and Youtube, at the same time as discussing the open source software community, for the former is only concerned with content and will use whatever tool is appropriate; the latter wants to define and design the tools. In some ways, open source development mirrors its own enemy - for where else do you find a puritanism about "design" and "function" other than in the exclusiveness of the Eames chair or the Apple Mac?

Yet it is the open source community model which makes most sense for art, and for the avant garde artist. I would strongly disagree with the idea that the avant garde was ever non-collaborative (often entirely the opposite), but it does seem that we need to be aware of where great art comes from, and though it can be very much helped by institutions, it cannot be determined by them. (The art school gave us the Beatles, Bowie, Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols, for instance - not what they were developed for, but not a bad unexpected consequence, nonetheless). And, around this, and this is why "The art of with" debate is timely, there needs, to be frank there to be an intellectual and critical discussion. I wonder whatever happened to the Northern Intellectual? Our city and regional leaders wouldn't fit that description - and nor, come to think of it, would many of our other high profile figures. When its debating time in Manchester we roll out the interesting, the practical, and the well-known, whether its Guy Garvey, Ian Simpson, Wayne Hemingway or Dave Haslam. Nothing wrong with any of them of course; but there's a sense of either the streetfighter tamed, or the Grammar school boy acting down for the masses. It's why Tony Wilson had the streets of Manchester to himself, where 2nd-hand situationism, and a day job at Granada could make for an intellectual high water mark. On the day that MMU/Chorlton-based Carole Ann Duffy most likely gets the Laureate, our professor of contemporary poetry is praised for her humour, accessibility and popularity, not for her intellect. Main rival, Simon Armitage, is always careful to hide his intellect under a laddish cover of northern dry wit.

Yet, elsewhere in the city, the very strengths that Richard Florida noted in Manchester in his essay on the creative classes, all those years ago, are strong and well. So, there's a challenge for "the art of with" and the Cornerhouse, and that's about Manchester itself. Charles Leadbetter is fine and dandy, but its when the city doesn't have to import its intellectual discussion, but leads on it, that the city's undoubted knowledge economy will come into its own.