The increased secrecy of government coupled with the computerised monitoring of the private citizen have altered the balance of power by reversing the direction of scrutiny. "The protection of government information", argues Sir Denis Forman, chairman of Granada, "has become undiscriminating and obsessional". 15
Censorship and manipulation is, meanwhile, transforming the media from an agent of critical analysis and comment into an organ of establishment propaganda. These are not just Orwellian fantasies, as Sir Denis makes plain: "in the 1960s we were confident that we were holding our ground in the endless struggle against censorship and repression. We were wrong: during the last decade the opposing forces have made great advances... we must be vigilant in resisting the increasing proclivity of governments to manage news... The Establishment will always believe that the first duty of broadcasting is to support its view". 15 Kept in ignorance, the monkeys can only watch nervously.
Barrier also addresses a related issue - that of control. In confronting the overwhelming complexity of our problems a common response - as the monkeys remind us - is one of confusion and dismay. Encouraged, passively, to trust in the experts, it is nevertheless becoming clear that their extreme specialisation equips them inadequately for their task. In any case, decisions are likely to be guided not by the common good, but by political expediency or economic gain. With multi-national companies operating outside the jurisdiction of national law and committed to maximising profits, no matter what the human or environmental cost, Alvin Toffler's analysis of our plight in his book Future Shock seems appallingly apposite: "today", he writes, "we face an even more dangerous reality: many social ills are less the consequence of oppressive control than of lack of control. The horrifying truth is that, so far as much technology is concerned, no one is in charge... We are aboard a train which is gathering speed, racing down a track on which there are an unknown number of switches leading to unknown destinations". 16
Shed, Masi's most recent work, seems to offer a retrospectve view. The remnants of an earlier civilisation seem to invite a re-assessment of the values and achievements of our own culture. These fetishistic remains and the artefacts buried with them have lost their meaning for us. This melancholy set-piece seems to be an indictment of a way of life that is rooted in the pragmatic approach of scienbfic materialism and which has, consequently lost all belief in the transcendental possibilities of religion, art or culture - a state of being which Rudolf Steiner referred to as the "sclerosis of the soul".
The following passage could act as a description of the civilisation which Shed invokes. "In a remote past", argues Steiner, "to which only spiritual scientific investigation (anthroposophy) has access, we find different forms of consciousness and different human faculties. The human soul was endowed with a primitive, dreamy clairvoyance, as with a natural power. In days before the human soul had descended into material life to the present extent, the spiritual world was something altogether real and actual which men could perceive environing them". 17 Shed seems to mourn the passing of these faculties and the associated empathy with one's environment to which they gave rise.
The richness of experience has been diminished by an excessive emphasis on the actual and the factual. And with loss of religious belief, many look to the arts to supply emotional and spiritual sustenance - hence the huge numbers who troop round museums and view the work with hushed reverence as though they were in a place of worship.
But the artist is also caught up in the same web of scepticism, and the problems are too complex, too far reaching and too profound. A collective ennui threatens to overtake our spirits: "modern man feels uneasy and more and more bewildered", writes Erich Fromm. "He works and strives, but he is dimly aware of a sense of futility with regard to his activities. While his power over matter grows, he feels powerless in his individual life and in society... With all his knowledge about matter, he is ignorant with regard to the most important and fundamental questions of human existence: what man is, how he ought to live, and how the tremendous energies within man can be released and used productively." 18
The artists exhibiting here do not offer any answers - how could they? But they do at least confront the sadness of our situation and, by refusing to avoid the painful questions or to divert their audiences with cheery irrelevances or escapist antics, they help us to confront our loss and spiritual lethargy. More positively, by offering images that are themselves rich in metaphor and symbolic meaning, they encourage a mode of thought that is less prosaic and which allows the poetic a place...
