This Is Not Art

There is a festival on in town - This Is Not Art. They had a Sunday afternoon fair that I decided to go along to, somewhat for inspiration for my brain and somewhat just to sit back and peoplewatch.

There was a uniform for all the contemporary artist types in attendance.

If you're female, you must:
1. Wear stripey socks pulled up to uneven heights on the legs.
2. Wear outrageously bright leggings, with a definite favour toward flouro pink.
3. Have access to your own sewing machine and manufacture some kind of sack to wear that you obviously flaunt as expressive and arty, but in reality - it's just a sack made from your old curtains.
4. Shave off the hair on one side of your head and not bother with brushing the other side. Bonus credo for cultivating dreadlocks.
5. Sport a satchel of hand-sewn nature consisting of a patchwork of bits of other hand-sewing failures.

If you're male, you must:
1. Cultivate facial fluff. Do not shave, do not trim, do not wash.
2. Wear some sort military jacket, but avoid camouflage print at all costs.
3. Have some sort of metal bits hanging off your face.
4. Blue denim is not your freind. Wear black, black, and more black when it comes to pants.

I wandered past rows and rows of zines, wondering at how these people can happily charge five bucks for ten poorly photocopied pages of bad poetry and stick figure drawings. I wandered past jewelery stores that all seemed to make use of shirt buttons. Fancy an earring with a shirt button on it? Why thanks, that might come in handy some day. I wandered past racks of sewing machine "retro" [=sack] atrocities and hand-made political buttons.

This Is Not Art. Damn right. What could be a really inspiring festival exploring the personally defined lines between art and atrocity left me feeling like I had seen to much atrocity. As for expressing individuality, how can you do that when you all look the same?