Output details

'Who is Community?' a film and installation commissioned by Art on The Underground for Stratford Underground Station for the London Olympics.

Art on the Underground commissioned me to make a public work during the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics. As Bob and Roberta Smith, I created an intervention revealing the Underground as a public resource and potential engine of democracy; drawing on my research into the work of political theorist Hannah Arendt and Baron Pierre de Courbetin, the founder of the modern Olympics. Both featured as characters in a film within the project. Bob and Roberta Smith performed as ‘the Voice of the Community’ and engaged the audience with narratives of the 2012 Olympics. 'WiC?' included large scale images made for Stratford Underground shown alongside the film.

One of the challenges of 'WiC?' was to make work that interrogated and critiqued the notion of ‘collective ego’ under the specific constraints imposed by the 2012 Olympics and LOCOG. Arendt’s work, particularly her reflections on the responsibility of the individual to contribute and question received political opinion and her conception of democracy as performative, associative and participatory, resonated with De Coubertin’s ambitions for the Olympics and with my art practice.

The film’s imagined meeting between Arendt and De Coubertin explores themes of public space, social interaction and wellbeing. To connect with popular dissenting traditions I enlisted Tim Newton, who worked with Ken Campbell’s theatre group, to work with me on the film. It also referenced 'Oh! What a Lovely War' (Attenborough 1969), based on the play by Joan Littlewood, which worked towards an experimental model of a participatory social environment in the theatre.

The film 'WiC?' was screened and discussed at Ralf Rugoff’s 'Wide Open School' event at the Hayward Gallery (2012) and was a central element of an Arts Council ‘Museums at Night’ event at the Towner Art Gallery (2012).