WRITTEN ON December 4th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Pertinent Art

We love pertinent art, ie art which describes our relationship with the state. And look: State Britain – a classic piece of pertinent art based on the Brian Haw protest – has just won some arty farty prize! Hurrah!

The reason we need pertinent art in the benighted world of government IT is that the things that are going wrong (from HMRC discs via ID Systems, eCAF and eBorders to Connecting for Health) go deeper than technical or managerial nitwittery. Like climate change, it’s firmly in the category of “spiritual crisis”. We’re beholden to the wrong beliefs (money, efficiency, centralisation) and we’ve got the wrong principles (“personalised” services that treat people like ciphers, rules based discrimination, citizen-centric which means citizen focussed in the manner of a laser guided bomb). Where is the love, as Donny and Roberta used to sing? We don’t know what we want, or why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Artists can express this. They can express anything.

Matey here expresses our visceral frustration that democracy has taken us to war. War is one of those far-from-ideal things governments get up to. They pretend it’s all grown-up and necessary and “if only you knew what we knew”. In fact we all know it does more to destroy human happiness than anything else, it’s very expensive, and doesn’t create the climate of listening and respect in which justice can start to be done and peace prevail. It’s great for BAE of course, and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and a zillion others. But their view should not prevail.

WIBBI the military-industrial complex was required by law to publish a 30-50 year plan to switch entirely to peaceful technologies? WIBBI we had the deeper conversation, prompted by artists and people like Beardie we need to have to get our transformation to an e-enabld society right?