The Radical Gardner

A movie that I enjoyed very much. It’s an investigation on radical borderlines in art and advertising packed up in a movie form by Hermann Vaske.

It’s about how nowadays  radical has  become a buzzword. Everyone is talking about radical decisions, radical shifts or radical cutbacks.

One thing is for sure. Radical means different things to different people.

Malcolm McLaren, who is regarded by many the inventor of punk, gives a short history of radical movement. Radical art was a form of art that protestet the status quo. A form of art that challanged the culture to change. An enormous leap of faith  in the culture was taken in the 60’s in music, when suddenly it was singing songs of protest. The art was suddenly breaking away from traditional painting and sculpture and becoming involved in more interactive experiences. We had the marriage of art, Andy Warhol, with movies  and music by The Velvet Underground.

Today art is no longer looking to change the culture, but to run in tandem and promote the culture that already exists.

Today art has become a brand.

Cologne gallery owner Rafael Jablonka concludes “Especially in the last ten years, the artist has become a competitor of Paris Hilton.”

For Koons, radical art “gives just kind of a sense of consciousness to things, makes people aware of their environment and of how they can participate in that environment.”

For artist and radical dandy Sebastian Horsley, surprise is one of the most important things in life, never to do what is expected of you.

For Dave Droga from the New York advertising agency Droga5 “the most simple solutions are the most radical ones.” Droga is responsible for the UNICEF Tap Project.

Roald van Wyk does radical advertising for PETA in NYC. “The only way to speak to these corporations, to get people to notice and to pay attention is trying to hit them as hard as possible. And I think that worked well in a radical way.”

“The reason we took the Colonel as head of the torture camp, and making him so surrealist is because they’ve spent all this money and try to bold up this guy as the fun-loving southern colonel, and you know, it’s all bullshit, because, none of those things are true. It adds layers, and it softens the blow of what they actually do to these poor chickens.”

Kalle Lasn says that “radical advertising is advertising that stirs up the pot. It’s advertising that throws a curveball into the system. It’s advertising that shifts paradigms and creates epiphanies for people, and changes the world.”

The Déboulonneurs in France also deal with advertising in a critical way.

“In the new world that we are about to enter, advertising will play a much less significant role than it has done in the past twenty years or more,” says Malcolm McLaren. “The primary reason is, as we begin to understand what it is we need to consume and what it is we don’t, what it is we need to survive and what it is that we don’t need to survive. How can we take from the past, from a culture of necessity, and apply it to the future is a big, big problem. But one thing is for sure – people are fed up being trapped in a culture of desires with no end in sight. That has got to stop.”

These are some of the point views presented in the movie. A great movie full of insights of what radical could represent.

“Never do what is expected from you.”

“Go to the bottom of the ocean and not dorwn.”

“Don’t follow the rules.”

“Question and protest the status quo.”

“The simplest way of doing things.”

For me radical means forcing myself to walk an unknow path and create from what I found on it.

I wonder what radical means to you ? Give me a clue.