Uncle Gav reports from a Punk Art show:
Many works here are complicit in the liberal notion that punk was a protest about negative things like unemployment and urban decay. But it would be better to argue punk was a celebration of urban decay! As alluded to earlier, punk inhabited a transitional zone between the collapse of the post-war consensus and the ‘reality’ of free market economics we now inhabit. It was easy at this time to see Babylon as collapsing, and this collapse as the fertilizer by which punk might grow. Abandoned buildings meant squatting opportunities and skipped rents. Unemployment meant time off to practise your art. It’s all falling down? We never liked it anyway. Punk was always closer to a Ballard novel than a World in Action special report.