The Centre Cannot Hold is an artistic project with an integral social development process and activism.  It intends to develop new approaches to critical realism for the emerging conditions of the 21st century, involving narrative and dialogical experimentation, interactivity, and participatory immediacy.  Its thematic focus is on the intersection between three related areas: climate/environment, race-migration/global inequality, and justice/human rights. 

The "BUY THIS" installation was the central focus of the work.  Additional activity that took place included connections and developmental links with local community-based agencies, artists, activists and individuals, plus scheduled events within the installation space involving live performance and discussion.  These activities are integral to the project, not only in terms of social and political development but also in terms of developing a participatory aesthetic which is influenced by our involvement as artists with the dialogues of local activity. The artwork does not stand independent of such dialogue, and therefore cannot become an independent art-work in the mainstream sense in which art is dislocated from this context for the purpose of consumption in galleries.  This is true even if audiences are habitually unable to locate this dimension when viewing the installation.  Nevertheless, the following text focuses purely on the installation itself, and should be read after watching our YouTube film and reading The Description in which there is an implicit interpretation of the installation.
 
According to Gramsci, “The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.”  The media-saturated culture which we in the western world inhabit is a facet of a wider approach to (over-) consumption which has become the norm, and which is fundamental to ideas of maximising economic growth with the resultant process of murdering the planet’s resources and bringing about climate devastation.  More than this, we believe the arts, media and cultural sectors to be largely complicit in nurturing false illusions and political amnesia around experiences, histories and realities which are excluded from or distorted by the dominant narratives.  In doing so, this ‘soft’ consumption of particular cultural and aesthetic meanings actually forms our ways of thinking about our world in immeasurably powerful ways.  It seals our disconnections, perhaps most effectively when there is some flirtation with the ‘other’ realities.  We can rub our hands in glee with some critical banter during a party, but hey – this just adds some ‘edge’, it doesn’t need to spoil the party, does it?  If we claim to be truly critical artists, we must not forget this. 
 
Much is written about our evolving perspectives on the socio-political issues around race and the environment already and how climate change is an extension of a neo-colonial process.  The strength of our interest in the ‘content’ which drives our work may obscure the complex and profound thinking around the aesthetics of the “Buy This” installation-based work.
 
As artists we wanted to engage perceptions, imagery and sounds in a way which encouraged critical thought and dialogue, to avoid ways which encourage the consciousness to dwell on the form, or which simplify and relegate critical narratives into aesthetic forms for artistic consumption and ‘armchair’ review, thereby breaking the dialectic between subjectivity and objectivity (as discussed by Paolo Freire).  We explored how certain cultural and aesthetic forms have enhanced the beauty of narratives and ideas by drawing people into the words themselves, such as with various uses of calligraphy and the philosophical and discursive traditions of China and the Middle east.  Other word-based dialectical and dialogical creativities include Forum Theatre and particular traditions of songwriting. 
 
The challenge is not to simply present powerful narratives or juxtapositions.  Above all, the challenge is firstly to see if people will use a cultural space to think, and to think for themselves rather than simply consume culture because they are told it is good or ethical or its what specialist producers agree is worth consuming.  Secondly it is to see if the artistry can not only be appreciated for its form and how its form enriches and gives a distinctive slant on how the content is read, but also how it can encourage, stimulate, enrich, inform and playfully focus that thinking. To engage such Freirian dialectic within our work we developed a series of artistic and aesthetic strategies: 

• Presenting a range of continually new human narratives on-screen, some of which must have just taken place in a very recent time and/or local place, so that the narratives continue to develop during the period of installation.  While this places a pressure on the artist to continue to develop work and collaborate with activists and respond to events during the exhibition, it means that the work is never ‘history’, a viewer who engages cannot ‘distance’ themselves from the roots of this ‘product’ through excuses of time and location.  The installation becomes difficult to commoditise – in fact it would be hard to actually “BUY” it.
   
• The creation of a café-like environment.  The space around the installation had to become an informal social space in which people can sit and either ignore the work, or consciously engage with it, or variably engage in any gradation between these extremes.  Developing a conscious engagement must co-exist with unconscious or sub-conscious thoughts.  People must be able to reflect, critique, share and discuss not only the art on display but also their own ideas and lives they have brought with them, and they must feel comfortable to do this while being able to appreciate the work – something deliberately difficult in the usual ‘white cube’ gallery space.
   
• The sequences of moving imagery and sounds never repeat, yet maintain a rhythmic momentum.  The use of software to randomise the playback order of the various video clips or the instrumental-pitch and sound-samples that comprise the audio soundtrack.  The portrayal of the events, ideas and expressions has a similar ‘rhythm’ to many in nature, such as of the sea or wind, or of flames, which despite their momentum never actually repeat.  The rhythms of human activity are also resonant here, including in particular the rhythms of electronic global networks.  Whenever you experience the installation it will always be different, yet maintain continuity with the last time.
   
• The bare process and style of filming and editing is minimally raw with people’s faces on the centre screen ‘jumping’ when the video is cut to another section, and the microphone and interviewer are also often kept in shot.  These interviews are, however, carefully edited for their narrative content; it is the content of information, expression and ideas that is the focus.
   
• Imagery and texts from narratives that are not normally seen as connected are layered into the same work, creating dissonances and collisions between advertising slogans, war propaganda, indigenous people’s voices, political perspectives, historical narratives, supermarket consumption, seaside holidaymakers, and so on.
   
• The construction materials of the hanging screen is of found wood, string and available paper, and is constructed on site the day preceding the exhibition period.  The text uses charcoal and the paragraphs are written on paper.  All of this is discarded if not recycled at the end of the exhibition, meaning the installation will never look the same between any two sites and again making it difficult to commodify.
   
• The installation can in some ways be regarded as a set in which the ‘audience’ or visitors to the gallery become actors. There is the development of a parallel performance practice involving live music, poetry, documentary material, and debate which has the effect of transforming the screens into performative agents integrated with live performance. There is a deliberate attempt to break down notions of genre and remove the commodity value of performers by removing barriers between them and the audience.

The overriding intention is to develop a critical art practice that contributes to and is a part of a shift in cultural norms of activity, towards a thirst for argument and questioning, thinking and playing with alternative possibilities, rejecting passive consumption and armchair critiques.  This is a pre-requisite for sustainable progressive change to take place, towards a world in which far more people at every level can be informed and challenge, can be engaged in debates that can make a difference, can provoke through both culture and collective action, and can actively participate in both individual and social transformation.