Last night of the urinals

It is the final night for our monument to the spectre of conceptual art. Of all the concerns raised during our investigation of the public amenities riots of 1932, none were more pressing than the threat of an imminent breakdown of the fabric of society itself.

While Marcel Duchamp's fountain opened up the art halls of the continent to the idea of utilitarian objects possessing qualities of meaning as valuable as the mythological associations generally carried by great works of art- it was an idea that could only be introduced with a great deal of provocation at the time.

The mood was similar in Wellington nearly twenty years after the first unveiling of the fountain. When the Academy of Fine Arts refused to exhibit the fountain it was because they considered it a threat to what was valued as art at the time, although they may have thought it a boring and impish piece of imitation lacking in originality. Regardless of the mindset of the curators of the day, the fountain was refused. Not only that but several members of the Avant-Garde who had argued vigorously in favour of its inclusion were made to feel foolish for their support of progressive notions of social and cultural activity. It is strange that the backlash which this authoritarian attitude engendered, resulted in the wholesale and enthusiastic damaging of public utilities, by the Avant Garde, in an attempt to acquire their own works of art. Thus, sadly for the progressive idealists of the time the very source of their inspiration, the fountain from which great possibilities seemed to flow, became the target of misguided vandalism and acquisitiveness.

"Even in the most closed cultures men believe they are free and open to the universal; their differential character makes the narrowest cultural fields seem inexhaustible from within. Anything that compromises this illusion terrifies us and stirs up the immemorial tendency to persecution. This tendency always takes the same direction, it is embodied by the same stereotypes and always responds to the same threat. Despite what is said around us persecutors are never obsessed by difference but rather by its unutterable contrary, the lack of difference."

Rene Girard The scapegoat

Eager for progress

As a boy growing up on the streets of Paris the young Marcel Duchamp would sometimes venture with his playmates into the artistic district. It was on one of these occasions, as they ran back and forth across the road pushing a hoop and generally carrying on as children are wont to do, that a shot rang out across the neighbourhood.

In later years the now fully grown Marcel insisted that the bullet passed thru his hat and shattered the glass of a nearby window, but that is merely a matter of conjecture. In reality the shot was fired by the now notorious Alfred Jarry. This was many years since the demise of his unfortunate brother who had left behind the comforts of Parisian life in search of Pastoral harmony with nature, and ended up, as we know, falling foul of a pedestrian and a curb.

The young Marcel's mother, who was herself still lively for her years- upon hearing that crazed playwrights were now taking potshots at children in the artistic district, marched - and if the cliche' is not too onerous, with a rolling pin in hand to the doorstep of Jarry's apartment.

We can only imagine the remonstration received by Jarry at the hand of the young mother, as astonished Marcel stood by. Jarry's response has now become the stuff of legend- that his target shooting endangered her children, he replied, " If that should ever happen Ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you."

Whether impressed by such a degree of provocation or simply deciding that it was safer to keep his enemies close at hand Marcel began following Jarry, taking notes on the collection of dust , the rules governing exceptions, and the difficulties encountered in proving through chance that alternate realities do exist- an obsession attributed to his love of chess.

Sadly Jarry passed away, perhaps before his apprentices training was complete- however the foundation had been laid and Marcel went on to infamy of fame, as the case may be- depending how you look at it

Virtual Arcadia

We are delighted that the installation of our second monument proceeded in a discreet and trouble-free way. We feel something of its benign yet disconcertingly conceptual gaze fall upon us as we cross over the isthmus between two roads.
Already moss, branches and ferns have leaned gently over our spectral sprite as if it had always been there in that place. Clearly the great water-pump of the city and the smaller fountains of gas, water and air which make up the breath of the trees that hang over the amenity, remind us of a time when nature and man lived together in harmony.
Wishing to pause for a moments relief and clinging briefly in our mind to the image of this idyll, we must move now to the subject of the public amenities riots of 1932, this and some of the questions posed by the querulous Marcel Duchamp will comprise the substance of our next bulletin.

" His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes' famous characterisation of life as "nasty, brutish and short", and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things. "

Tom Hodgkinson Jan 21 The Guardian