11.06.1998

Hatching a conspiracy

Every Sunday until June 28 there is an explosive happening of music, poetry, film and performance at the Battersea Arts Centre running under the title ‘Conspiracy’. But, say its organisers, this is only the beginning. They want to create a new counter-culture, a theatre fit for the 21st century. Jack Conrad spoke to one of its founders and main movers Tam Dean Burn

How did ‘Conspiracy’ come about and where do you envisage it going?

First I would like to say that I’m really pleased to get my thoughts into print. Coherence is vital in an area at present characterised by chaos. The establishment dominates the arts not least because we lack a coherent alternative. The more people that can be fired and given direction through a dialogue with revolutionary Marxism, the more dangerous we become.

The initial step has been our contribution to the Red Room’s season, ‘Seeing red’, at Battersea Arts Centre. Lisa Goldman - its artistic director - asked me to compere and programme a Sunday night event which would complement the season. The idea was to have something spontaneous that would draw in others - rather than the usual theatre audience. That sparked a coming together of people with whom I’d previously collaborated - like Lisa. Over the years we’ve gone our separate ways. I’m really glad for the opportunity to do something with them now.

The ‘Seeing red’ season is extraordinarily ambitious for the people at the heart of it, not least because it is seen as the tentative beginning of new political theatre - a recognition of absence. Obviously to develop a theatre for the 21st century we must rethink both in terms of form and content.

I’ve been operating in theatre for 15 years professionally and have been through all sorts of cultural and political upheavals and turning points. But I’ve always been trying to find a way of creating a theatre that would fundamentally stimulate me and the people I live amongst. Rather than merely doing theatre as a job before an audience with whom I have no relationship whatsoever. That is what they teach you to accept at drama college - like it or lump it.

In theatre there is a rigid separation between writers, actors and the audience. There is also a gulf between those who go to the theatre, including ‘Seeing red’, and those who don’t. There must be a solution and, as Ewan McColl told me just before he died, “art is about solutions”. We have a draft manifesto for a ‘Theatre of the New School’. The idea is not only to provoke discussion about how we make a theatre fit for the 21st century. The idea is to begin to do it in practice.

What happens after June 28?

We have developed a relationship with a venue in Brick Lane. It offers the opportunity for us to do the type of work not allowed in traditional theatre companies - unless we are willing to accept their agenda, which is not only ghettoised, but pretty dull. This place in the East End hasn’t got any of those institutional barriers.

We are also seeking public subsidy. Such grants have been used to segregate and control artists. Little is available for cross-arts work. There are however sympathetic elements, including within the London Arts Board, who recognise the problem. But the real point is to think beyond the normal notion of public subsidy.

They say that those who pay the piper call the tune. Hasn’t the establishment been extremely successful in targeting, flattering and incorporating artistic talent? There is also divide and rule. Instead of oppositional artists uniting against the system, don’t oppositional artists end up competing one against all in order to gain state finance?

We don’t intend to rely on state finance. There are areas of popular culture, culture that has come from below, that have rapidly grown while public subsidy has steadily evaporated. The dominant force here is club culture. Today it operates not just on a national, but an international scale. Naturally, success carries the constant danger of being commodified. There is a continuous struggle. At one extreme stands the underground, oppositional, camp. At the other extreme there are companies with an eye on fat profits who are muscling in. That contradiction is true with every new creative art form.

But the fact that it has been able to go from something that started with a few hundred people in this country to something of global proportions is proof that dynamism comes from below. Here is a mass terrain where we can operate. We need to both learn from it and provide direction. Counter-culture can ride as well as buck the market system. We can’t afford to be purists. Whatever means are available to us - state subsidy included - must be used in order to create the sort of work that is needed. But to be free from the actuality or possibility of official or unofficial censorship we have to have a mass base and be commercially viable.

No one can deny that we live in a money economy. But if a counter-culture becomes a commercial success isn’t it inevitable that some clever entrepreneur or faceless corporation takes over? Under these circumstances doesn’t opposition become its opposite - sanitised and divorced?

Some of it might. But that does not mean all of it will. ‘Alternative’ comedians in the 1980s suddenly became important figures. They were often consciously political. They stood against the old fashioned racist and sexist crap that once passed for comedy. They were naturally anti-Thatcher. Now those who have stayed true to themselves are openly anti-Blair.

There are some who are making enormous profits out of club culture. But that does not stop new energy coming from below and constantly transforming the scene. The free party system takes place outside the directly commodity sphere and attracts thousands every weekend in London alone. Acid house has been tremendously vibrant but has reached its limitations. Many are looking for something more; a few are beginning to seriously think about politics.

Inevitably club or acid house counter-culture has a political edge. People party all night at illegal venues and take illegal substances. The full force of the law has been directed against them - drugs raids, riot police and helicopter searchlights - turning perfectly innocent enjoyment into an act of rebellion. But is the change you detect a generational thing - people simply getting older and becoming tired with hedonism - or is there something more to it?

There is more. There has been a breaking down of the generational gap. The 30 and even 40-somethings mix with teenagers and those in their 20s. There is also a new mood of anger. That is really what our project is designed to key into and articulate.

If you are West End club owner counter-culture is a nuisance. Perhaps a direct threat. But isn’t club culture inherently containable? The object is to have fun. What I’ve seen at ‘Conspiracy’ is fun and experimental, but it is not simply about getting out of your head. It’s about using your head. Isn’t that less containable?

That’s true. And even if we are used for profit, we will maintain our freedom to say what we want, when we want. If that means planting our flag elsewhere, so be it. The closest example I can think of is Irvin Welsh - someone I’ve worked with a lot. Writers like him have not been absorbed. What Irvin has been able to do is to operate in a commercial way. Yet at the same time he has maintained a principled position at the forefront of the new school of writing. His latest book, for instance, exposes the forces of law and order in a way that we have never seen on TV or film - which usually glamourises the police.

He’s been through similar cultural and political experiences to me - punk, the 1984-85 miners’ strike, acid house, the Liverpool dockers, etc. Irvin recognises the burning need for class politics but that over the last 20 years workers have gone from one defeat to another. Artists must have a great inner strength to maintain their integrity in such a period. Both when they are showered with praise and cash and when they are slagged off, when they try and snuff you out. Which is what they are trying to do with Irvin just now.

I would also add that there are some progressive entrepreneurs. Quiet a few I’ve come across through club culture have in the past been leftwing activists. They drifted out due to the period of reaction and the sense of isolation. Some of them are saying, ‘Yes, we are going to use the market.’ They do not fool themselves that the market can be beaten from within. But it is possible to retain integrity.

I don’t deny what you are saying. After all, if you look at what you could call my counter-culture - ie, Bolshevik history - they had a number of fellow travellers who were successful business people. They also had artists around them - Maxim Gorky being the most outstanding. But it is nevertheless essential to recognise the pitfalls. Surely an inherent danger with your project is that nine out of 10 of the best talents will simply be snatched away and made into ‘stars’. Some individuals might be able to withstand the pressure, like Irvine Welsh, but they are the exception.

It depends on what is on offer. At the moment there is very little or nothing in terms of an organised, socially significant alternative in society. So there is nothing that we can align ourselves with. Artists like Bertolt Brecht, Paul Robeson and Ewan McColl never sold out to the ruling class. In part because there existed the perception that the world communist movement counterbalanced bourgeois society and its values. However illusory, there is no such alternative today.

What about the Socialist Workers Party and other such leftwing organisations?

The SWP is a sect and a philistine sect at that. It defines the working class in the narrowest possible way. Instead of fighting to make the workers into a leading class through having answers for all sections of society - a class which champions democracy - the SWP sees the question of class purely in terms of strikes and the workplace. For them working class politics is trade union politics. Such economism is why the SWP has no serious orientation towards culture. Indeed it has a certain distrust or contempt for culture. A friend of mine - a former SWP member - has a framed article from Socialist Worker on their wall. The headline runs: “Is Irvine Welsh anti-working class?”

There is so much conservatism on the left. There is no healthy relationship between left sects like the SWP, Socialist Party, etc and artists. Gerry Healy’s WRP used to recruit actors. But it used them in the most irresponsible and wasteful fashion - the revolution was supposedly just round the corner. Either that or it cynically wheeled them on and off at rallies. That was a road to nowhere.

What sort of relationship do you see between oppositional artists and building a genuine mass working class party?

At present oppositional artists lack confidence. That is natural. People do not believe that we can win battles through collective action. People don’t enter struggle because they don’t believe they can win. For objective and subjective reasons the situation is bound to change. When it does, artists will test the programmes and political strategies of the left in practice.

I’ve got every confidence in the project to reforge Communist Party of Great Britain. Those around the Weekly Worker have over the years proved themselves right on all the main issues and have been willing and able at crucial moments to throw off routine methods of work and dare to take a lead. They did it in the miners’ Great Strike and the Gulf War. I am sure they will do it in the future. Though I am not at present an organised revolutionary I am convinced that the outlook of the Weekly Worker provides the best way forward.