Output details

Common

Common is a novella set in the City of London over the summer of 2011. Written in the run-up to Occupy, it encompasses a crash in global markets caused by the downgrading of American debt, turbulence in the Eurozone and protests/riots that started in London before spreading across Britain. Written as Self-Appointed Artist in Residence, events in Common take place over a day. The book brings together the past and present/personal and political and asks; how can lay people understand more about the current economic crisis? How might subjectivity and political agency be combined to create a text that is both immediate and reflective? How might we make sense of crisis from within? What is the impact of the economy on the environment? Common draws on two key literary references. The gothic atmosphere of Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Man of the Crowd, helped me find a tone of voice and develop the narrator’s persona as outsider/insider detective/artist. The semi-autobiographical novel W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec was a model for autobiographical writing, uncertain memory and the use of fantasy to create allegory. Common is a metaphor for collapse (social, environmental and economic). Performance recurs throughout: my own interventions, the performance of markets and traders and of bonus the banker clown in the Crisis Cabaret. In March 2013 I performed this chapter onstage at the Barbican Theatre. Other performers included Martin Creed and Ai Wei Wei (by video).

I began working in the City in 2009, when artist Andrea Mason and I held three Capitalists Anonymous meetings on the steps of the Royal Exchange. I have read from Common on numerous occasions including at organised reading tours in the City of London and at a debate around literature, activism and the climate commons.