On Friday, a bottle-nosed whale made its way up the River Thames, swimming through what could only have been experienced as a little canal compared to the deep sea waters this creature is used to. To the amazement of thousands of wide-eyed witnesses gathered along the banks, the great mammal entered central London. The apparently disoriented seven-tonne whale had ventured, against all odds, out of its habitat and out of its depth.
Because I was hiding under a pile of books at the British Library that day, the news got to me via an SMS message stating: “Apparently there is a whale in the Thames outside the Tate Modern.” I laughed thinking that it was putting on its own performance, as worthy of Londoners’ attention as any work of art preciously preserved within the walls of the gallery. After all, it certainly got more attention than the contemporary art on that day . With the outpours of sympathy that went to the poor creature, one could have thought that this whale had a promising future. Alas, it was to have a very short, yet memorable career as a performer.
A few hours after the first live whale to be seen in the Thames in living memory was spotted, an altogether different type of performer was attracting my attention. Marc Cousins, giving his weekly lecture at the Architectural Association stated with his usual bombast: “When you enter an institution you become an idiot.” Sitting in an institution at that very moment and having spent the best part of my day in another, I was compelled to consider the implications of that statement: by entering an institution, you give over all power to “higher authorities”, assuming that professors, librarians, curators, guides ought to know more than you. In order to be granted admission into libraries, universities, hospitals, museums, embassies and town halls – surely repositories of all the world’s wisdom – do we have to first admit in front of witnesses that we are ignorant?
Knowledge is a potent form of power and if we assume that institutions own it all, we choose to be forever out of our depth. We somehow put ourselves, against our better judgment, in the position to loose all the ease with which we usually evolve and become distressed, ungainly creatures. Like a whale in the Thames.
Martine Rouleau
2 comments:
I somehow tend to agree with Marc Cousins' assertation since most individuals who dare enter my institution in their quest for cultural knowledge are complete idiots whose sponge-like brains I enjoy filling with complete nonsense for my own entertainment. Which doesn't mean that I don't respect them, of course.
Très intéressant comme commentaire. Il est vrai que la majorité des gens ne semble pas remettent en question l'hypothèse que l'institution, où son représentant, détient la "connaissance". D'ailleur n'est-ce pas une condition essentielle au bon fonctionnement de nos institutions hiérarchisées ? En même temps, c'est aussi la principale cause de l'immobilisme des grandes bureaucraties. Est-ce que l'internet en démocratisant l'accès à la connaissance modifiera le comportement des gens envers l'autorité ?
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