::07 12 09::

Klimaforum09 Opening

‘Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole and leave the tar sand in the land’ said Nnimmo Bassy, Friends of the Earth International chief in his message at the opening of the People’s Summit, Klimaforum in Copenhagen last night.

Naomi Klien said, ‘This is the last chance to save the world. Our role is to be the truth teller and the lie detectors. We’re here to recognise the difference between a deal and success.’

She reiterated that this is a coming of age conference for anti-corporate protestors who will demonstrate in Copenhagen in hope of a good deal but warned that ‘The Bella Centre is the biggest case of disaster capitalism yet. The deal we really need is not even on the table.’ In praise of suggestions coming from Bolivia she said a positive outcome would include deep emissions cuts, repayment of climate debt, and the adoption of green technologies.

‘This isn’t going to be an Acitivsts Versus COPs event,’ punning in the conference’s name COP15. ‘But rage has a place here. All along we’ve been betrayed, especially by Barack Obama who has blown so many once in a generation opportunities like having the banks in his hands. We have a right to be angry but intelligently.'

Obama took another hit when she spoke of how bored she was of the word hope after his campaign. Citing Hopenhagen, a major music concert where the Backstreet Boys were billed to play this evening before dropping out, as green washing, she termed the event a branding extravaganza. ‘The globe has a Siemens logo on the bottom and the whole event is sponsored by Coke. That is a capitalization of hope.’

Speeches this evening served to gather the thoughts of those whose attention might have wandered in the run up an event that has already seemed to last forever. Klein squeezed in an apology for flying to Copenhagen instead of swimming but reminded activists of why they had taken the long journey here, even if some took longer ones than others.

::06 12 09::

An Unlikely Activist
Ben Mansour Mimoun, 68, is a habitual activist. Having focussed his efforts on the promotion of multiculturalism throughout his life he’s also been distracted by anarcho-veganism and expelled from his homeland Morocco for his allegiance with insurrectionary socialism.

We met as a result of a recurring battle between food and bed that happens each time I pass through a city alone. As usual, food had walked off with the prize of the few Euros that I had to spend on one or the other. The Belgium chips and waffles went down well but left the victor with a few hours until dawn as everything else began to close.

I walked up to the Arabic neighbourhood near Gare du Midi where it was probable that the Moroccan takeaways there had the stamina to stay open until I could enter the station at 5am. Typical of any late night café near a station I was offered some weed, however, determined to get some use out of the backgammon I’d foolishly packed I returned the gesture by suggesting we play instead.

He had other things to do. We spoke for a while and I went inside. The dealer got back to work and Ben struck up a conversation about racism in Britain. He’d been watching the footage of anti-Islamic demonstrations in Nottingham on Al-Jazeera, however, it offered an opportunity for me to find out about everything he’d done.
Worldly and knowledgeable, until it came to AIDS which he said you couldn’t catch if you were circumcised, he snuffed his snuff and we chatted about his time working for Ravage, No Paper and SOS Racism in Amsterdam. He cooked at the famous autonomous kitchen Autonomcentrum and is still active now, directing Mrax.

It was clear that his anarchist uniform of black Dickies and a hoodie had enjoyed a lifetime in rebellion. Whilst the scenester protestors might dress up like Bill Ayers (police photos below), here was the fashion inspiration for the more autonomous activists.

His saggy face looked like a basset hound as I caught him cadge a Lipton from the fridge and sneak it into his pocket. This freegan from three generations ago has probably used that look a lot. However, whether it was because he saw a similarly rebellious streak in me or because he was pleased to have beaten me twice at backgammon, my completmentary chick-pea stew and mint tea was well received.

It was nice to come across this diehard in the most unexpected of places.

::05 12 09::

When Climate Camp announced they would pitch in Trafalger Square, I was in a record shop in Brussels. Yup, during the UK's largest ever climate demonstration I was buying 80s disco. Although my commitment to this cause seems questionable I did not choose to be here let alone miss an otherwise more important event.

However, having found myself in this situation it's probably worth drawing links between the point of this trip and the products of ADD. Not to mention distract me from thinking about all the other things I'd rather be doing (Benji B at Soul City London, Theo Parrish at Plastic People, Guilty Simpson in Copenhagen, waiting for paint to dry) - Brussels suspends life in a limbo where the strain is on your head rather than your lower back. The discovery of the shop in question came as a relief.

In 1980 Kano released their self-titled debut album, a gem of a record produced by band members Luciano Ninzatti, Stefano Pulga and Matteo Bonsanto. It took Italo Disco to the international stage and made nifty use of new technology like the vocoder. The tracklisting includes classics such as It's a War, Cosmic Voyager and I'm Ready. It was a good find.

I left the shop, went for a little coffee and carried on reading my press copy of Sonic Warfare by Steve Goodman (aka Kode9), out January. Chapter 5, Abusing the Military Entertainment Complex, talks about the appropriation of military technology for entertainment purposes. Goodman quotes media theorist Freidrich Kittler:

"Funkspeil, VHF tank radios, vocoders, Magnetophones...have released an abuse of army equipment that adapts ears and reaction speeds"

"Our discos are preparing our youth for a retaliatory strike"

With this in mind, Kittler's comments posit Kano as a good group to soundtrack some action. Ruckus to 'It's a War' with its use of 'army equipment' and the Danish authorities are bound to break. Or at least dance.

And whilst police are cleaning themselves up after the excitement experienced from the sweet grooves on this record, protestors will relish in the humor and harmony of this beautiful genre. Kano will be a welcome change to the asexuality and white cultures that stiffen (in a flacid way) most environmental demonstrations.

Alas, this hope might not fall on deaf ears but it'll probably be drowned out by Throbbing Gristle or Stockhausen. The closest they ever came to subversion of a human kind was at the ICA in 1976.

::05 12 09::

For when the rains come
Alice Coltrane feat. Pharoah Sanders - Journey in Satchidananda

::03 12 09::

Attend Copenhagen without being called a hypocrite (or a total twat/delude idiot/wasteman)

The data below describes the amount of CO2 emitted by people on a trip from London to Copenhagen.
As you can see, if you travel by bike your carbon footprint stays low. The train is the best form of transport if you don't have any legs. The car improves a bit if more people are traveling and if you plan to fly then why not take a giant shit on Al Gore's face while you're at it:

1 Passenger 2 Passengers 3 Passengers 4 Passengers
Route kgCO2 Route kgCO2 Route kgCO2 Route kgCO2
Bicycle 12 Bicycle 24 Bicycle 36 Bicycle 48
Train 39 Train 78 Train 117 Train 156
Plane 107 Car 169 Car 169 Car 169
Car 169 Plane 213 Plane 320 Plane 426

A few notes:

:: Car
Route consists of driving from London to Harwich and then taking the ferry to Esbjerg (Denmark) and then onward car journey to Copenhagen
:: Bicycle
Assumes the same route as the car but avoiding motorways and travelling as a foot passenger on the ferry
:: Train
Assumes Eurostar to Brussels, Thalys to Cologne, Deutsche Bahn train to Copenhagen
::Plane
Includes train from London to Heathrow and train from Copenhagen airport to central Copenhagen
This considers CO2 emissions only and does not include the non-CO2 effects of aviation. To take into account the full impact of aviation these figures should be multiplied by 1.9. See Note 10 of Annex 6 for more information

Bigup the Energy Saving Trust for providing this information

::01 12 09::

Albert Ayler, "Music is the healing force of the universe"
Roska - Climate Change

::30 11 09::

A week today, the largest environmental gathering in history will begin. From December 7-18, 30000 people will flood Copenhagen to express their support for action on climate change. Expect bike blockades and a one-hour electricity blackout as part of the most imaginative acts of insurrection yet.

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, took part in The Battle of Seattle at the World Trade Organisation conference in 1999. This time round she believes, "It’s really tricky for activists in terms of figuring out how you interact with a summit like this. There’s a different dynamic [from Seattle], because the fact is that the people in the streets overwhelmingly support the mission of the meeting in Copenhagen. And, so, they’re not saying "no" to the idea of a climate summit. In fact, they’re saying "yes."”

Klein will speak alongside George Monbiot and Vandana Shiva at the official ‘People’s Summit’, Klimaforum09. “Klimaforum’s aim is to provide an opportunity for the public to enter into discussion. We're going to be looking at radical solutions," said spokesman Richard Steed.

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth International (FOE) have organized one of the major actions during the conference. The Flood, consisting of about 3,000 members of the public who will take to the streets dressed in blue and march towards the Bella Centre after joining up with the other marches that day. Collectively, they will signify that a good deal needs to be made for the developing world.

The Flood will be part of the Global Day of Action on December 12 when the city centre will become a carnival of parade. 'System Change, Not Climate Change' is the slogan for the less formal actions being organized by Climate Justice Action (CJA), the umbrella group for an international network that includes Climate Camp, Focus on the Global South, and the Indian Social Action Forum. The network of organisations marching that day plan to convene outside the Bella Centre to show the level of solidarity needed to meet the reduction rate. A massive video screen next to the entrance to the Bella Centre will display suggestions and messages to delegates and a 4-story globe, the Climate Rescue Centre, will also be in situ inviting delegates in for coffee and the chance to debate with the public.

Developed countries accept domestic emissions reduction obligations of at least 40% by 2020 compared to 1990 with no offsetting. African governments walked out of the talks at the last UNFCCC meeting in Barcelona because rich industrialised countries refused to commit to emission reduction targets. As well as coercing governments into committing to these targets demonstrations will also highlight that market-based ideas, like cap and trade schemes, emissions trading and carbon sinks might be simple opportunities for companies to profit from pollution. Protests will highlight that climate finance needs to be reliable and transparently managed and allocated for mitigation, adaptation and technology transfer for developing countries. Importantly, most protestors reject any World Bank involvement in international climate finance and demonstrated on December 11 by actions from a group Our Climate Not Your Business.

Other protests such as Resistance is Ripe and ongoing exhibitions by members of indigenous populations from Peru, the Philippines and the Arctic will meet the suggestion from developed governments who promote trade liberalisation, privatisation, forest carbon markets, agrofuels and carbon offsetting as methods to reduce carbon emissions. NGOs such as The Third World Network, Focus on the Global South and Jubilee South will participate in the official conference and lobby against the dangers of these proposals to local communities.

Meanwhile, many people will travel to Copenhagen for the arrival of the high delegates on December 16. Highlights include darkness at 7:00 pm the lights of the city will go dark for one hour - Earth Hour - sending a powerful message about the need for a commitment to a global climate deal that is strong enough to avert catastrophic climate change.

During that day, members of the public and CJA are arranging an action called Reclaim Power. They will attempt to enter the Bella Centre en masse and turn the debate into the People’s Assembly for Climate Justice. Although this sounds easy, UK protestor Isabel Jama, believes, “that we’ll definitely be met with violence from the police. CJA has a guideline that we’ll only use our bodies in the protest and we’re anticipating police tactics to be an obstacle to get around not to confront. However, this will be different to UK protests where police don’t use teargas and we’ll be working with legal and medical teams on the day. Danish kids are rowdy and the police use dispersal tactics there instead of kettling.”

Danish officials have taken a firm stance against activism in recent years and UK protestors are expecting to witness the type of resistance seen in the dismantling of Ungdomshuset (Youth House). Police emptied the community centre run by activists and musicians in the middle of Copenhagen in March 2007 and 436 people were arrested after police used teargas against the crowds. Another example of intolerance is the steady dismantlement of Christiania, an autonomous zone in the centre of Copenhagen where cannabis laws did not apply until 2008. Whilst the Danish government announced last week that they have turned warehouses and gyms outside the city into temporary prisons a new law has been hurried through parliament ahead of the summit and police are now entitled to arrest anyone who they suspect might breach the peace. Danish student Seb Ross says, “Protests have begun to combat these infringements of civil liberties, and whilst there’s an ideological perspective to their action their point is informed by the environmental agenda that requires a constructive outcome.”

Nonetheless, protestors believe this draconian approach simply requires imaginative thinking. The Laboratory of Insurrectory Imagination (Lab of ii), a Bristol based art collective, have joined up with Climate Camp to design a bike block to aid Reclaim Power. Isa from Lab of ii said, “We’re utilizing all the benefits of bicycles to make the day a success, for example their swarmability. By combining the creativity of the art world with the courage of the activist community our prototypes include chariots and multi-story bikes, where one bike is welded on top of another making it really tall. These will give protestors advantages over the police.”

Such images of engineering are reminders of the post-apocalyptic scenes in the cult film Mad Max and appropriately so for an event that aims to halt the world’s decent into such a scenario.

Damien Hirst Interview

For the Indenpendent

Athens

Steeped in 3500 years of history, the home of culture and the once capital of the Greek Empire, Athens is currently regarded by visitors as a grim city. Un-phased by its status amongst tourist crowds I set out to find life in this place, behind the ill-designed modern apartment blocks and busy streets that provide the ingredients for many tourists’ superficial conclusions. However, I discovered that reputation and reality are distinct for another group of visitors to Athens, whose only antidote to the truth that jobs are guarded tightly for locals, becomes heroin.

I had 24 hours here, financially and transportationally disabled; I was unable to get money from the bank and the bike that I’d used to ride from London to Greece was now hobbling like an old mule after it had provided an ill-advised backy to Clio. My ferry from Poros, a monkey-nut shaped island east off the Pelaponese, arrived at 2pm. The sail was pleasant and I shared the deck with the aunt and uncle of the girl who was the cause of my detour to Greece in the first place. In fact, it was nice to speak with them on a relaxed level, as our last encounter had been at dinner the night before, an event daggered with awkwardness due to Clio’s mother’s distain for my presence and potential corruption of her daughter. The experience was so far beyond comfortable that I had begun to wonder if Clio was a modern mermaid, of the stuff of Homer, whose sirens had led me to an unavoidable death by maternal stare!

The late August sun hid behind the downtown high-rises as I passed a soup kitchen in Athens’ Omonoia district. Known to tourists for its abundance of cheap hotels this area is also infamous to locals for its association with drugs and crime. I was only in town for 24 hours and had been drawn here for the latter of these two reasons to visit; not to engage in drugs or crime but to peer into the cracks of a society that’s keen to paste over such problems, with the aim to find what truth lies behind the city’s touristic veneer.

The scene was of a leafy square, with many benches and fountains. Lots of people were eating as well as queuing to receive meals that were being handed out by volunteers with masks over their mouths. Attending lunch at the kitchen was a varied range of people, young and old, male and female, high and sober. The only similarity between them was that nobody was Greek. Why? After all, no proof of deprivation was required and the food seemed to be good, if a little like an aeroplane meal.

I approached a young man, curly haired and observational, sat with one leg over the other as he stroked his chin. Mohammed was from Tunis. We spoke in French and although this was his mother tongue Greek was easier now as he’d keenly practiced since arriving two years previous. “Mon soeur”, he said, “eat”. As he offered me his food I found it funny to hear him address me as brother, as many N.African people do, just usually in English whilst you’re being sold something. He couldn’t eat the carbonara meal, as A. it had pork in it, B. it was the 3^rd day of Ramadan. He’d picked it up to give to someone else and thought I was as suitable a candidate as any. I wasn’t but accepted, not wanting to seem rude.

Mohammed was sitting with friends, also from Tunis and he exchanged greetings with other passers-by. People here were regulars, he told me, and as we spoke more I learnt that there were common stories that could be told by many people eating; of travelling to Greece on a Zodiac, of entering Europe possessing little more than the rumour that there was work, and of their burdening and unwanted relationship with heroin – seemingly the only thing to welcome immigrants once they arrive.

Lunch ended promptly at 5, everyone was ushered out of the park as the clean up began. Mohammed and I continued to talk outside and we were joined by one of his friends, a man who had spent most of the mealtime slumped over his dish. Even now he was high but the relocation had jolted him into life. None of us had anywhere specific to be and an onlooker might have accused us of loitering. “Why are you here?” was the first question Mohammed’s friend asked.

“I don’t really know”, I responded, “a girl invited me and so I came.

“Do you work?” was his second enquiry.

“I don’t have a job.”

“But there’s a lot of work there, or, why don’t you get a job here? You have papers, in fact, you can go anywhere.”

This was true, and a familiar point made by many people I met on my route to Athens, by bike from London. As a British person you can travel anywhere and the accusation made by countless people from Albania and North Africa, that we don’t value our freedom enough, is true also. Yet, it wasn’t the ability to explore but the opportunity of work that fuelled his envy. He shared with me his experience of racism and his belief that his Tunisian and Muslim roots made finding work even harder. Mohammed backed up this talk although his attitude was less resigned than his friend’s. He’d in fact secured an infrequent shift cleaning in a hotel. A perk of the job was a cupboard where he was allowed to keep one or two belongings. He suggested I leave my bag there, lock up my bike and that he show me around.

Our route to Omonoia Square took us past many people doing ‘business’. Mohammed knew these dealers and they all introduced themselves to me. “What can I get you, Mohammed, draw or a tourist?!” one wittily asked. The area was clearly teeming with drugs, to the extent that there seemed to be no escape from the inevitability of buying some. I picked up some weed then bought some juice. After sitting for a while and watching skateboarders, Mohammed and I went to a nearby spot where I could skin up in peace. By now it was dark but the alleyway he’d chosen was lit by a single street lamp. I spotted two women already there, although their practice was obscured to me at first by their position. The younger of the two had her head cocked towards the sky with her shirt splayed whilst the other pierced her chest with a needle and injected the substance. The mixture became red as the syringe retracted and the instrument left her body.

The scene was slightly surreal and I sat on the edge of a plant pot nearby and began to role my joint. By now Mohammed was causing a commotion with the two who clearly weren’t ready to hand over the needle. He sat next to me and began cooking up the brown. I asked him how he was and he said it’d been two days. “Do you think I’m a bad guy?” He asked. I honestly didn’t; in fact, it was strange that seeing him prepare this stuff didn’t make me think anything different about him at all. There was something honest in his habit, as if he was filling the only role that’s laid out to people in his position. “Did you do this in Tunis?” I asked, knowing full well the answer. Of course not, it’s cheap and easy to get hold of here and you don’t need a map to figure out the only direction for many people who had come here from Africa.

Oddly, this alleyway wasn’t very secluded and occasional people wandered through, casting glances and then faces tired of the regularity of the occasion. Syringe wrappers and little UHT milk containers littered the ground. I watched on, whilst the three got on with the job. Then Mohammed sat back down and we joked and continued to share the juice. AIDS crossed my mind but he poured without the carton touching his lips. He reiterated that I shouldn’t be scared anywhere in Athens, that we were friends because we’d shared food together earlier and that he wished he could work to get to Patras, a westerly town in the North Pelaponis.

Mohammed took it upon himself to show me the rest of the city and we made our way to the Acropolis. He bought some Kouleraki, the ubiquitous Greek biscuit, and we shared the bag whilst strolling back through Syntagma Square and up the mountain. He was sensitive to the beautiful view of white lights and we shared the lookout point with others similarly keen to hangout there. The food and the walk called for another joint that we shared. We both agreed that eating and smoking were better social events than drinking, a habit we both abstained from.

Our descent was precarious, down the slippery and uneven marble in the dark and we stopped to take a photo of each other in front of the ancient structure halfway down before making our way back to the neighbourhood had become to feel familiar. Leading off from Omonoia Sq was a precinct. About 20 meters wide at the entrance, lit well and easily accessible from the metro station outside. In fact, we’d walked through here earlier that day but it wasn’t instantly recognisable with the shop shutters down. There was a slight dog-leg halfway down and the extent of how well lit this place was meant that the groups of people milling around, sitting and sleeping weren’t intimidating. However, each person was here for the same reason: to score drugs and do them once they’d picked an available spot in the tunnel.

Mohammed looked at me, “my friend, don’t worry”. I was very stoned and I became struck with a sense of panic, what the fuck was this place? 3 blocks from the central square in a major European city and only a few meters in I’d already passed 15 people shooting up. Mohammed reassured the people he knew there that I was with him and the small group who were queuing to pick up soon lost interest in me. There’s only one thing people come here for and the manor in which each addict was conducting himself or herself, showed it to be a course of conduct, learned only through experience. The scene was shocking, I’d witnessed nothing like this in my life before despite being exposed to heroin addiction via friends. For all I cared it could have been pickled eggs that these people were taking as it wasn’t the heroin that made me shudder, more the desperation, degradation and dependency. The processes were regiment but what differed between each taker was where he or she would inject. Into thighs, faces, necks, forearms, legs. Each would inject and then slump into the ground. I watched Mohammed squirt the blood from his syringe onto the floor and return it to his pocket. I gave some water to his ‘friend’, the guy who’d injected for him, and lent against the wall. Occasionally a foreigner to this scene would wander in but turn back as soon as they read the situation. This wasn’t surprising given the central location, a fact that became more baffling each time I thought about it. There was an official clean-up attempt before the Olympics, of drugs and dogs, however, the prevalence of each today seems to suggest that it was a superficial endeavour and the government had neglected to deal with the root of the problem. As if dealing with it would recognise it. Heroin is any issue everywhere but surely if it’s taken in the faces of councillors then it’s an unavoidable topic that needs sorting out. The visibility of this behaviour only compounds the Greek attitude to immigrants’ worth and the cycle continues. Racism goes on everywhere here, from the street vendor outside whose mean rudeness to Mohammed almost caused me to throw the doughnut I’d bought in his face, to the derogatory reference Mohammed made towards a Chinese man we bought juice from.

We slept on a roundabout until I’d decided enough insects had crawled up my shorts. Mohammed couldn’t sleep either. He suggested we find some friends of his elsewhere but I told him I was going to ride my bike out of the city and pitch my tent.

Vito Acconci and the case of Storefront

Not long ago I shared a small idea with Vito Acconci. Our chat hadn't

interrupted him whilst he was in mid-masturbatory simulation but went
on after a talk held at London's Tate Modern on the collaboration of
Art & Architecture.

The topic of the talk was Storefront for Art and Architecture and Acconci’s design process. In the description he located a problem with his design, that when it's raining you cannot open the rotating walls, thus, rendering this main feature useless for half of the year. During the Q&A afterwards, an audience member offered this question: "What would be your ideal exhibition within the gallery?" Flummoxed somewhat, the question was general but might have caught Acconci off guard having previously been asked a series of even more boring enquiries regarding his choice of materials. He couldn't say. It was
funny in fact, he literally couldn’t come up with anything.

Perhaps because it’s actually a bit crap as a gallery, or at least the curators miss its potential. Either way, baring these two things in mind, following the talk I posed to him this: Imagine Storefront became bankrupt. Instead of selling the premises you could donate the gallery to the city. The gallery would move out and the walls would be
left open allowing the people of New York to occupy the empty space as and when they pleased. The function of the space would suddenly become boundless; providing shelter during bad weather, providing a meeting point for fellow New Yorkers, or simply acting as a detour to the straight lines of the city streets. Thus, the effect of this would overcome his current qualm with the design and answer the question asked of him originally.

He liked this idea and we shared a joke about how we could sabotage the gallery to implement the plan!

However, in the likelihood that our shared scheme would remain a dream, the event got me thinking about imagined spaces, or even imagined art pieces. Similar to the construction in Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, the possibilities to document fictitious art and its implications are endless. Cheap too.

Since the beginning of the recession an increasing number of spaces have opened up in London. I don’t mean gallery spaces but literally holes where buildings used to be. In some cases entire blocks were knocked down with the idea that new buildings would replace them. However, when the crash happened developers couldn’t commit the cash and as a result the sites remained empty.

I always imagine these spaces as blank canvases for architects, an exciting exercise for them to imagine structures where the perimeters are set, budget is no boundary and all you have to do is fill it. However, an many houses have also become vacant over the past year or so, boarded up with wood or sytex, thus available for let to the imagination of whoever might want to enact a life in there. An infamous example is the Heygate estate in Elephant and Castle.

Then I found this, nestled in a gap along a Georgian terrace in central London. A shanty-esque shop front with village hall hallmarks it has the piecemeal architecture of something far more imaginative. The blank notice board and careful colour scheme allude to a purpose that’s been lost and present possibilities for newcomers to imagine their own use of the space. It’s a doll’s house, so unique that lives and loves from beyond reality can unfold from the minds of whoever will paint their dreams onto it.

Above, wedged between brick walls either side the wooden upstairs seems to have been stuck on, taking Gordon Matta-Clark’s collages as inspiration maybe. Arguably Clark’s work was also only imaginary. He structurally transformed his buildings but mutated their appearance further in the representation of each action. His images are beautiful and placing aside the problems of documenting conceptualism they act as interesting admissions that ideas can be investigated further in imaginary format than reality allows.

And perhaps this is why a conceptual stalwart like Acconci struggled to put his finger on some-‘thing’ to fill Storefront with. He was reiterating the fact that there’s a perennial problem with production. That the product will always be bound by various laws of physics, not to mention immediately commoditized.

So the question is, how to exit this creative cell? Can someone be an artist without producing anything? Or due to this will visual art always remain be a lesser form of creativity than music, which thanks to technology can go beyond the sonic capabilities of reality?