Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I admit it.
I am a Twitter addict. For me it is a hive mind where signposts to everything shuffle past like leaves on a stream. Naturally, on the first day of one & other, the link to the website rolled past. And I clicked on.
The live feed showed it was a chap in a red t-shirt, just standing. Watching the world walk past, watching him. OK. I went and found something else to do.
But my curiosity was still there. I could still see people talking about about one & other. With the #oneandother tag on their tweets. What was on the plinth now? *click* A man dressed as a town crier slumped on the plinth. Then a man with a chalkboard. Then a chap in a panda outfit and a large sign with his mobile number splashed across it. I laughed as he told every single person who called how weird it was to be up there. 3 hours later and my own twitter stream was a mass of #oneandother tags pouring out along with everyone else watching in fascination that day.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
I started watching at night when my insomnia got the better of me. I lay in my bed listening to a man telling stories from Arabian Nights to the people below. The ‘disco’ fountains spraying swirls of colour. The sudden jangle of sirens passing by. The familiar beep beep noise of the cherrypicker reversing, having left a new person on the plinth. Drunken hecklers in the square asking, always asking ‘what are you doing up there?’ and ‘Why?’ to a Plinther blinking wide eyed in the floodlights. It wasn’t long till I got into the habit of always leaving a tab open with one & other running so I could flick over and check who and what was going on up there.
Gradually of course people melted away after the first few weeks. The ones left started to recognise each other still tweeting away in the one&other stream. There were the night timers from across the pond. The smattering of UKer’s and the ones from the other side of the Channel, all who were mainly seen in the daytime. There was always someone on watching and tweeting. Of course even that blurred. Any time one of us was awake we would check out what was going on. Ask who we had missed. Were there any we should go back and see? Was there anyone we knew up there? Really? Oh well, will stay up for their hour then. Even the staff of one & other had started to join in. The folk in the portacabin upstairs in charge of manning the cameras and feed realised they had instant feedback for any technical difficulties so got a twitter account. Despite their best efforts to remain anonymous, the Twecklers as we had become known by that point (twitter + heckler. I know. I am sorry.) started to see differences in tweets and camera operation styles and the Droids, as we called them, ended up with a bizarre alias each and rather good naturedly mended wonky live feeds (the dreaded SCOD or Spinning Circle Of Death/Doom, a familiar sight to a frequent watcher of the feed, that required a kicking of feed ‘hamsters’, our shorthand sentence for whatever technical wizardry a droid had to do to keep everything running,) muffled sound and provided camera shots of crowds, shoes, close ups of signs, pigeons, hawks, and other Trafalgar Square wildlife on capslocky Tweckler demand. The downstairs team as it turns out, were quietly reading but occasionally popped on with information about the project. Like the cherry pickers (which aren’t. They have some long name which frankly just isn’t as fun as cherry picker so I forgot it.) For example, we were told how they had foam filled tyres for stability. (I actually did go look for the nails they said had been hammered into the tyres to prove that this was so. Was rather excited to actually find one!)
So there we were bouncing about our hashtag. The Twecklers. People would come and tell us when they were going to go up. Or come along after their hour and join in with the tweckling but for the most part we were a fairly static number. We developed a plinth lexicon. Dreadful in jokes. A shared love of a good pliché (plinth cliché. Told you the in jokes were dreadful!) More of us started to apply for the project since it seemed like a natural progression to move from tweckling to plinthing. And the others were present for their hours no matter when it was to support them.
Despite this I held out on applying for a place till convinced at 6am one mad morning by a one & other staffer to enter the final draw. I never did hear back. Such was the volume of applicants they never did get to everyone to tell them they didn’t have a place. I was, I have to admit, a bit relieved. In the general scheme of things I am a natural spectator. The devil in me allowed me to apply. But my devil might not have propelled me up there or into any level of acceptable coherency. I don’t think I am the right shape for a plinth really. I think the plinthing gods agreed with me on this one.
Why am I mentioning this? I feel it is important to remind people there were spectators. Not just plinthers or staff or the homeless of Trafalgar Square watching. Not just Captain John (though he did a stellar job of being there for so many) There were more than just a Plinther’s family and friends watching. The ones that didn’t go up there were more that just some words on screens. We were witnesses to the whole project. No one was ever alone up there. The Twecklers were right there with you. And we loved you. (even the really boring ones. You meant we could get up and get a cup of tea and actually talk to our families occasionally) We sang along, chair danced, noted pages turning, we even cried. We listened to life stories, willed the nervous to relax, wished we could hold the hand of the ones with vertigo, we donated to charities and even a short film. We looked to see if Gunther’s chicken landed ok. (it did. There was a twitpic sent to us showing Thrifty the Plinth Diving Chicken happily scratching about with other chickens…and a sheep for some mysterious unexplained reason)
The Twecklers decided to spend the last night in Trafalgar Square watching the plinth and meeting all the people we had been tweeting to for all these months. Some were plinthers too, some weren’t. But the Tweckler bit was the really important part (though naturally, the Twecklers chalked up some of the best hours!) We had grown from tweeting each other to facebooking, skyping, emailing, phoning and texting. The connections from the plinth had grown into something bigger than even we expected. And this was our one chance for a good number of us to be on the same spot. I thought we were mad (me especially. It says much for my fellow Twecklers that I would even consider an 800 mile round trip, let alone do it!) but I am glad I did. Trafalgar Square is an amazing place. The lit plinth rising up out of the dark. I got to see the disco fountains in person. Shout up to the Plinthers. Play with bouncy balls at 4 in the morning. Drink spicy homemade soup. Salute Captain John. Visit the droid cave and meet Droids, feed hamsters and see their amazing skills as they flicked between screens, logged and made the cameras dance across faces. Hug more people than I have ever hugged before, even on Edinburgh’s Princes Street during Hogmanay. Watch someone juggle just for me.
And laugh.
Really laugh. For this I shook Antony Gormley warmly by the hand (he was probably slightly bemused at this. Instead of identifying myself I decided to introduce him to the 5am plinther of the last day who wanted to meet him. It seemed appropriate.)
So that was my plinthing experience. And despite my lack of hour up there I can say I was actually on the plinth. People carried me up there with them. Literally in a few cases since I was a pliché call for at least 3 people as well various hellos and mentions from friends and Twecklers turned Plinthers. I figure in Warhol terms I got my 15 minutes and more. See if you can spot me, hiding in plain sight.
But Is It Art?
The question every media person asked ad nauseum. Of Antony Gormley, of Plinthers, of the gobs on sticks they brought to the sky arts sofa on a Friday, of the ever present art critics flicking hands disparagingly with a curled lip (Brian Sewell, I am looking at you.)
And what is art anyway? Not even an art critic could safely define it I expect.
Art is so many things. It shouldn’t be about what it actually physically is. It should be about what emotions it evokes. We know this. Or there wouldn’t be people banging about a large box in the Tate Modern right now. It shouldn’t even be about who makes it. All through time art has been about many hands even if the initial idea was by one person. I seem to remember being told that a lot of classical paintings were painted by assistants and the grand artist would come in and add hands, faces and finishing touches to make it his own. Are people perhaps a little uncomfortable that the art on the plinth was looking back at them? Like Manet’s Olympia, real and daring us to look again.
Yes, it is art. From where I stand, slightly square eyed after watching what I am guessing might be anything up to a 1000 plinthers take their place up there (easier than you think if you enjoy watching the changeovers almost more than the hours,) I can see the portrait of Britain this project was supposed to create beginning to take shape. In all it’s technicolour, slightly frayed, naked, chicken throwing glory.
And you know what? I think it is beautiful.
