A Dream Fulfilled: original car park art

Having spent my life struggling to achieve an appropriate level of mediocrity in my chosen profession I had few ambitions left before Time's bony hand grasped my soul. However, one of the remaining ambitions was to inspire 'art of the car park' and thereby widen the appreciation of this modern architectural phenomenon as true heritage before we sleep walk into a carbon neutral (car park free?) future. In my blog 'The Future Will Be Better Tomorrow' I speculated that my work was done; there was no need to blog any more as the world had now woken up to this important issue. Almost immediately the Scottish independence referendum quickly brought me out of retirement; shockingly there was not one mention of car parks in the SNP manifesto. THEN, my inbox pinged, my heart leapt and my soul sang when 'Curfew 1: Three Car Parks' (below) was sent to me for my consideration.

When you go into a car park, how do you feel? Do you develop a different perspective on life? Does the sheer geometry of the location inspire you? Does the bleakness of concrete and metal overwhelm you? Or do you just get your car keys out, open the car door and drive off, missing the possibility of possibility.

In the case of this immensely talented young artist, car parks have inspired her to map her subconscious psychogeographical experiences in those spaces to create something new, and special, and wonderful. In a previous blog I considered Picasso's view that, 'art is the lie that enables us to realise the truth'. Little did I think that I would see the embodiment of Picasso's thesis.

'Curfew 1: Three Car Parks' has an inherent truth. Study it closely and our human interaction with car parks begins to make sense. The rawness of it speaks to the very soul of soullessness that car parks appear to embody. But the piece takes that bleakness, reflects it, deflects it and then fashions an impossible beauty from it. Thus it goes beyond Picasso, it has strong echoes of Nietzsche. I would hesitate to go as far as asserting that standing in a car park is like gazing into the abyss, but it is a locus enabling you to face down the monsters within you to allow true artistic release. As Neitzsche stated in the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star”. 

This work is a dancing star.

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Aren't car parks wonderful. Isn't art wonderful. Isn't life great. Art makes life worthwhile and car parks make a trip to the shops bearable - apologies for the bathos - so excuse me while I wipe a manly tear from my eye and go and lie down for a bit.

Curfew 1: Three Car Parks lithograph by Sarah Fischer

Save the Car Parks of the East Midlands - update

Last week I used my blog for an impassioned call to sign a petition against the havoc wreaked upon the car parks of the East Midlands in the name of heritage. Literally thousands of you responded by failing to sign my petition. In the spirit of this revolutionary fervour I'd like you all to continue that level of commitment and continue to not fill in the petition at the link below.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-the-car-parks-of-the-east-midlands/

Thus armed with the evidence of an unprecedented level of mass apathy I will ignore the heritage conference taking place in Nottingham next week thereby sending an unsubtle message of invisible protest. In the words of that great  protester Mahatma Gandhi I will take the view that, "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good."

That will show them.

OK I might still turn up - it's a free conference after all. BUT I will eat the free food in a non-cooperative way . This may result in a lot of crumbs, so if you come across a small pile of debris in the corner of the lunchroom recognise it for the car parking vandalism protest that is the beginnings of a worldwide non-violent protest movement.

"We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of car parks! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history."

Nothing says that more eloquently than a pile of crumbs

with apologies to Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the quote

Save the car parks of the East Midlands

It is with a heavy heart that I feel I must take a break from teaching you how to be better managers to come back to my favourite subject - car parks. Unfortunately its not with good news.

I have had to blog on this before. 'Save Our East Midlands Car Parks' was a particularly unread call to arms in defence of this neglected part of our national heritage. The focus was on the wanton vandalism perpetrated to the car parks in the East Midlands. Since then I have kept my eye on that part of the world, and what I read displeases me greatly.

Usually I read with delight the proliferation of car parks around the world, covering up useless pieces of natural habitat, or as the result of the demolition of buildings too old to be of any use (e.g. castles).
But not in the East Midlands of England where a warped sense of the past still prevails.

Leicester having suitably ignored the presence under one of their car parks of a disastrous monarch that brought to an end a centuries old dynasty through murder and mismanagement, were persuaded to dig him up and now want to celebrate this. What sort of message is the local council sending to its citizens? In the council chamber did they think, 'Let us inconvenience people through the removal of one of the useful symbols of wealth and success of a modern city (the car park) in favour of a celebration of tyranny, murder and ultimate failure (a load of old bones). The world has truly gone mad.

Northampton dug up a car park to find a castle, Lincoln destroyed a car park to build a museum - the madness is endless.

The final straw has come when I read the headline, Another Car Park Another Discovery in the Heritage Daily. http://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/05/1131/ Yet again the good burghers of Leicester are suffering at the hands of heritage vandals. This time the University of Leicester have got their hands on a car park. Academics shouldn't be allowed out - I've been long convinced Universities are a form of care in the community for clever people.  Yet they have discovered 'personal items' such as jewellery and shoes in their car park. If any 'normal' person is found in a car park in possession of digging tools and 'personal items' that do not belong to him he would rightly be arrested - not lauded. That is the kind of moral vacuum that seems to pervade the East Midlands of England.

The time has come to act and the perfect opportunity has presented itself to begin the fight. The East Midlands Museum Service is hosting a conference in Nottingham to support museums and heritage in the region. The programme ignores car parking heritage entirely, but they seem to want ideas for the strategic direction of heritage management in their region. If I am armed with a petition I will demand that car park protection is part of that strategy. I urge all car park thinking people to join me outside to protest then come inside (it's free apparently) to lobby attendees.

Therefore please support me when I present the strength of public feeling to the East Midlands Regional Museums Conference on 5th and 6th June 2013 by signing my petition at the URL link below

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-the-car-parks-of-the-east-midlands/

The future of car parks is in your hands.

Save Our East Midlands Car Parks

I have felt compelled to break from my usual blogs about the ongoing challenge of managing a modern museum to reflect on disturbing news emanating from the heart of England.

The good burghers of Leicester have recently vandalised a perfectly good car park to find a 500 year old suspect in double child murder case known as Richard III (or known in gangland circles as Triple Dickie). Not so much a cold case as an ice box. What are they going to do? Find the skeleton guilty and sentence him to permanent display in the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham?

This could be put down to an aberration, but then I discover that the wayward citizens of Northampton are busily destroying their car park heritage to find a castle. A castle! A building for which there is no practical use and will be a drain on the local economy. The exact opposite of a car park. What has Leicester started?

Next thing you know Lincoln will be knocking down a perfectly good multi storey car park to put up a new museum unimaginatively called 'The Collection' or something. Oh no, they've already done that.

What is it with the East Midlands? Don't they realise they are merely a region you go through in order to get to somewhere else. Will they attract more visitors by emphasising their violent and murderous past, or have more places to park? I think the answer is obvious.

Lets start a Save our East Midlands Car Parks campaign. In this country we only want to save our heritage when it is under threat. Lets act now before they are all gone. Already they are becoming much more expensive to use- soon we'll stop using them and then there's nothing to stop heritage vandals from putting useless castles in their place.

Act Now! Start a passive resistance campaign. Go shopping in Derby this weekend-by car. The future is in your hands.

You have been warned.