Now You Have Authority

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POST STUDENT ART SCHOOL (PSAS)

_{With the intention of questioning the current state of Art
Schools, especially with
universities behaving like corporations that make limited promises and deliver
even less, Now You Have
Authority (NYHA) will conduct a series of workshops at TATE Exchange.
The workshops begin with a computer interface playing the role of a tutor/workshop
leader directing the participants towards performing a range of activities with various corporate produced,
consumerist objects placed in the space (e.g. - Coffee Cups, chips boxes etc.).

The interface is intended to encourage adults as
well as children to take part in the activities with the specific intention of
breaking down the barriers of age
regulated art education. Set within the context of a reputable Art Institution (TATE) and using icons of everyday
consumerist objects, the participants are encouraged to re-appropriate them and
then perform the ubiquitous act of sharing their creation on social media.
These creations then serve as the new set of raw materials for the
next group of participants to repeat the actions albeit with their own creative
take on the objects.

This act of recycling the objects and the notion of
repetition highlight the excesses of the art school environment when it behaves
like a corporation. Students are now considered consumers of a product (the
product being “art education”) and are encouraged to swallow the rhetoric
whilst being promised a ‘free environment’ to make their art. The works created
by the participants remain “complete” only as a digital artefact within the
realm of Instagram thereby indulging them in the act of instant gratification in
the era of doing things explicitly for
the sake of sharing them on social media.}