Chris Alton. Photo: Courtesy of Chris Alton.
The Swarthmore lecturer interview: Chris Alton
The 2018 Swarthmore lecturer Chris Alton talks to Ian Kirk-Smith about his background, faith and art
Could you talk about your family background?
My Mum taught at a primary school and the head teacher was a Quaker. She had lost her own mother when she was in her teens and the head teacher took her ‘under her wing’, so to speak, and they started going to Croydon Meeting together. This was where she met and later married my Dad.
They divorced around twelve years later. My Dad has since remarried – a woman called Beauty. They live in Zambia eight months of the year and are in the process of setting up an orphanage. So, I’ve grown up within Quaker circles. When my Mum died in early 2016 I found solace in my relationship with Quakerism; which had been a vital aspect of my Mum’s life.
What was your early involvement with Quakerism?
I grew up going to Meeting and went to Yearly Meeting from birth through to the present. From fourteen to eighteen I was closely involved with Young Quakers and Junior Yearly Meeting. Some of my closest and most lasting friendships were formed during this period of my life. There’s something quite remarkable about the bonds of intimacy and trust that young Quakers can form in a matter of days. I bear witness to blossoming Quaker friendships each year, when helping to facilitate Junior Gathering.
As well as my involvement with young Quaker events, I have attended various Meetings, depending on my place of residence. Having lived at over fourteen different addresses in the past seven years, it’s difficult to keep track. When I was a student in London I would attend Hampstead Meeting. Currently, I attend Westminster Meeting (Sunday mornings and the Younger Quaker Worship Group every first and third Sunday) and occasionally Forest Hill.
Did any events or individuals make a particular impact on you?
Absolutely. The gradual influence of spending years as a Friend and around Quakers aside, there was a particular event that I remember with incredible clarity. When I was thirteen Helen Steven came and spoke with the young people’s programme at York. She was truly inspirational: her delivery, her presence, and her sheer passion for the activist work that she undertook, but also the humour and the strangeness of the action that she described – kayaking (or canoeing) out to a Trident submarine at Faslane, boarding the craft and planting potatoes! It was the sheer audacity of her gesture that captivated me.
Helen’s talk also resonated with my friend Phil Wood (amongst many other young Quakers, I’m sure), who recently completed a year long placement with Quaker Peace & Social Witness.
Why did you study art?
I always enjoyed drawing as a child and, given that I spent a lot of time doing it, I became good at it. My Dad also encouraged me to do something I enjoyed. He thought it likely that my generation would work well beyond the retirement age of previous generations and that we would be unlikely to have decent pensions.
Alongside my Mum, he directed me towards that which I found fulfilling, teaching me to look beyond purely financial pursuits. Alongside my Dad’s sound advice for life were the unfulfilled dreams of my parents – those that remained unrealised, due to the unforeseeable circumstances of life simply ‘getting in the way’.
My Dad would have loved to have been a photographer and my Mum was an incredibly talented trumpet player. In their youth, she and her sister Eleanor won multiple prizes. After losing her own mother, my Mum felt less able to pursue music and gravitated towards teaching, because it was what her Dad did. Whilst trying to make a decision about whether to continue studying art, I found myself in a similar position.
Whilst studying Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics and Art & Design at A Level, my Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had my safe ‘STEM’ subject path mapped out, but this encounter with the fragility and brevity of life pushed me down the riskier path. I loved my Mum dearly and it was her encouragement, alongside that of Quaker friends, which allowed me to stick with art.
From there, I did a Foundation Course in Art & Design, followed by a BA in Fine Art at Middlesex University. My Mum recovered, but sadly died from secondary cancer in 2016. It’s easy to romanticise the dead; to speak only of their most virtuous qualities. It can seem disingenuous. So, I’ll offset my account of my ever generous, infinitely loving Mum with the fact that she was a quite terrible cook; though she could make a rather excellent lemon cake.
Did you enjoy art college?
For sure. I’d grown up in North Devon with little access to contemporary art or visual culture, so my first encounters with ‘art proper’ were when I moved to London. I must say that I don’t know if it’s fair to call Middlesex an art college – I don’t think there are many, if any of those left. It’s a university – by which I mean it’s a structure that ‘financialises’ education, converting it into a business and placing profit before people.
But regardless of how I feel about our crumbling education system, I got a lot out of my time at Middlesex and in London. I visited endless galleries and spent my first year making bad, derivative paintings and objects. Such a working through of ideas was vital, as it helped me to begin figuring out what I cared about; what I thought was worthwhile; and what I wanted to do.
Could you talk about your project/movement English Disco Lovers (EDL)? It was an early success. What was the background to it?
An early and totally accidental success! I had been to a number of protests against the English Defence League, as well as other anti-fascist marches. English Disco Lovers (EDL) was a way of reclaiming the ‘EDL’ acronym, using humour, defiant love and reinvigorated cultural history.
As well as attending protests, there were two exhibitions that influenced the project. One was by Jeremy Deller, who won the Turner Prize in 2004. He’d created a diagram called ‘The History of the World’ (1998), which linked together two musical genres – brass bands and acid house – via various cultural and political phenomena. I was drawn to this act of linking the seemingly disparate, in order to try and make sense of our world; to apply order to the seemingly incomprehensible and begin to extract patterns or tendencies.
The diagram informed a performance of acid house music by a brass band; the music itself swung dramatically between the joyous, the melancholic and the terrifying. It took a body of research and through a near-alchemical process transformed it into something moving and poetic, which said things about the time addressed in the diagram, which words could not.
When he accepted the award Jeremy Deller dedicated it to ‘everyone who cycles in London, everyone who looks after wildlife, and the Quaker movement’, which is interesting in the context of your Swarthmore Lecture. He, like you, engages with the political but brings wit to the artistic encounter. Does the other influence on English Disco Lovers?
Certainly. I’d also say that there’s a tenderness to Jeremy’s work. It emerges from a genuine fascination for and love of the complex world that we live in.
The second artist that I referred to as a significant figure of inspiration is Yael Bartana. She produced a trilogy of films called And Europe Will Be Stunned, which revolved around a fictional political movement, known as ‘The Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMIP)’. Throughout the trilogy, the said political group advocates for the return of over three million Jews, who fled Poland during world war two.
The films themselves reference and subvert the aesthetics of 1930s propaganda films. The films are simultaneously ironic and serious, serving to deconstruct a group of ideological positions that contributed to the founding of Israel: European anti-Semitism, socialism, colonialism and Zionism.
I took these works, learned from them and produced something new with my own spin. As well as learning from artists and participating in protests, English Disco Lovers (EDL) also grew out of my own research around social history and etymology.
For instance, the first discotheques came into existence during the Nazi occupation of Paris, in world war two. The Nazis deemed jazz music to be ‘degenerate’, so, as an act of defiance, people set up secret cafés where they could listen to it. They became known as discotheques – libraries of phonographic records.
How do you approach a new project?
Often by addressing that which was left unresolved in previous projects. I’ll look for these gaps, these oversights that deserve more attention. This leads to a period of research, which dips into literature, cultural theory, current affairs and other sources, collecting and assembling fragments.
Once I’ve built a substantial nest of research, it’s a case of transforming that research into something that is interesting and compelling for others, without simply regurgitating that which I’ve learned.
I never have an endpoint in mind. With English Disco Lovers (EDL) I allowed myself to be led by the research, as well as what felt right for the project. It became a set of social media accounts and a website, then it was a street protest group, then there were events in clubs, music videos; and all that I have mentioned and more, all at once.
It’s odd to look back on that project, as it was such a large chunk of my life. I was doing it at a time when the Internet was still perceived as something with radical democratic potential. It was optimistic. Things have changed quite dramatically in the past few years with regard to the machinations of online spaces and those who control them.
There is a political charge in your work. What are your influences?
I often say that Quakerism and skateboarding are the twin pillars that hold up the roof of my artistic practice. I cannot begin to imagine what the art that I make might be or look like without the influence of Quakerism. Truly, it shapes everything I do.
Quakerism aside, people of my generation (honestly, I’m somewhat loathe to talk about generational splits, as I think more is made of them than is merited – it’s simply another way of pitting people against each other) have grown up in a world marked by global terrorism, the financial crisis and looming (if not already here) climate change.
We feel the political urgency of this moment, acutely. Our options are to engage with these issues and effect change, or to be passive. Long ago, I chose the former.
What are your feelings about art, the head and the heart?
I find intellectual art boring and have similar feelings about decorative art. Each has its place in the world, but I get a kick out of that which successfully synthesises the two (as well as other factors).
For me, the best art speaks of our world with clarity, whilst grappling with its complexities. It engages the head and the heart; not that I’m convinced that these things are separate (they’re not).
What about the role of the artist today?
For me, making art – being an artist – is about trying to better know the world. There’s this quote that I regularly return to – John Berger, the writer, artist and critic, once wrote that ‘[art] proclaims man in hope of receiving a surer reply’. It conjures up a vision of a person bellowing into the abyss, in desperate hope of a response.
We are all dealing with the uncertain, the unknown and the unknowable. I think that making art is one of the many responses humans have with regard to our uncertain existence; another is attending Quaker Meeting, or any other form of religious gathering.
In the face of the abyss we reach out to others who, like ourselves, do not know. We weave a web of love, friendship and kindness; a network of meaning that makes us feel less like we’re on a tiny lump of rock, hurtling through space, and more like we’re holding hands with those we care for and who care for us. I make art to hold out a hand, which anyone may take hold of.
