Barbara Kruger’s ‘no’
Children have a natural ability in re-seeing and re- interpreting aspects of our world. In ‘Protest Camp’ anger is not the main motivation for their slogans, their protest is to be heard undiluted. Many slogans tend towards the surreal as a response to “addressing the world”. These findings throw an intriguing light on how we view childhood. And what comes into focus is the creative and conceptual approach to the idea of saying ‘no’.
For instance a typical ‘positive slogan’ idea thought up by a 6 year old at Edinburgh Fringe, “My name is Lillie”. At first it seems sweet and simple, safe. But transformed into a placard marched into the public arena it becomes a statement of wanting to be heard and to be taken in her own right on her own terms. It confronts us. We are forced to re-read and re-assess; at 6 years old the world is a difficult place to navigate and it is vital to hang on to a sense of self and not to be underestimated. At the other end of the scale, many children will “demand the impossible” echoing Paris student graffiti circa 1968 riots. Wanting the impossible is a natural form of protest against the restrictions placed on us all. Thereby we find many slogans such as “I Want to Surf on the Moon” and “ I’d Like to Skydive Down the Stairs” which rail against such limitations forced on not only children, but on all of us, by the laws of rationality or even science.
This voice of the irrational can be seen as an undervalued aspect in our goal towards a inclusive society. According to french writer Albert Camus “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion” This quote applied to children leads to a definition; As a child your very existence, with its impossible dreams of freedom from limitation, is a statement of rebellion.
Camus believed that the state of the irrational or ‘absurd’ is produced through a conflict, one between our expectation of a rational universe and the actual universe, which appears to be completely indifferent to all of our expectations. Again when applied to children we can read this as an inverted equation. The world presented to children by adults creates a conflict, one between the child’s expectation of the irrational, and the rationality of the adult controlled world, which is not only indifferent to this expectation but that seems to actively seek to deter it. When adult limitations cease to be helpful boundaries and become a barrier to self expression, what is ultimately lost is a potential for enquiry, an ability to “think outside the box”. Matthew Lipman, pioneer of ‘Philosophy for Children’ felt that the discrepancies encountered by children between these two worlds naturally “ captures interest and demands reflection and investigation …. The child is surrounded by a world that is problematic through and through and this uncanniness is evocative; it draws speech and thought out of the child”**.
Conversely for adults the common restrictions on us are ones of imagination. As adults we have long grown used to being rational, we are used to compromise. As adults we reflect this way of being back to children and unconsciously instruct this in our children. What the Protest Camp achieves is an opening of a much needed forum between adults and children by elevating and celebrating the natural eccentricity of youth – instilling a demand to hear and be heard, and taken seriously – no matter how small or idiosyncratic. I have often developed this line of enquiry in projects – for instance ‘Fate’ Islington Green lifts installation or ‘The Lost Amulet of the Queen of the River River Lea’ which are inconceivable without the lens of the child’s eye.
Protest for children. In this role-reversal, we see a power balance momentarily re-addressed. Given the child’s lead, an adult may also entertain the possibility of that concept of ‘no’ in its most creative and provocative sense.
* From ‘Resistance, Rebellion and Death’ Collected essays by Albert Camus 1960
** ‘Thinking in Education’ Matthew Lipman 1971
nicola godlieb 