Art, Lifestyle and Globalisation

Art, Lifestyle and Globalisation was a collaboration between PVA MediaLab,
alias and Tate Modern with additional support from London College of Communication.

Hal Camplin and Rebecca Swindell from Kangaroo Kourt attended the event on
behalf of alias and produced a visual essay and a critical report.

LbCulture Symposium - Art, Lifestyle and Globalisation

Starr Auditorium, TATE MODERN
7 April 2007

A Chinese artist carries a rock around the UK, meanwhile Rover cars are re-branded and made in China…

Art, Lifestyle and Globalisation focused on the growing complexity of the art business and its relationship to globalisation. At a time when huge lifestyle changes are taking place, how is the art community responding? Can artists retain a critical perspective on global issues? Symposium speakers, John Jordan, Bella Dicks, Tim Kindberg and Jemima Rellie and chair Anne Nigten were invited to revisit the idea of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘Global Village’.

McLuhan famously coined the phrase 'the Global Village' in the 1960s. In his book the Gutenberg Galaxy he prophetically predicted that "Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence." The symposium aims to examine contemporary linkages between art, culture and globalisation from the perspective of artists, corporations and institutions. This timely event brings together speakers and artists to capture a picture of the growing complexity of art production and distribution.