There’s a very interesting exhibition on at the Douglas Hyde Gallery at the moment. Nailed to the walls of the gallery is a collection of small woollen bags woven by women of Iran and elsewhere in the middle east. Chantehs, as these bags are known, were and are private objects in that they held no market value and were not made for trade. They were designed for personal use or often given as gifts. There were no predetermined aesthetic rules involved in the making of the bags and so the collection on show is a wonder of diverse patterns, colours, shapes and sizes.
You might wonder why such things are on the walls of a contemporary art gallery and not a traditional museum seeing as they bear almost no relation to what we’ve come to understand as Art in the modern world. They have no market value and market value dominates discussion of contemporary art, especially in this time of recession. They are of use – real, practical use – which is certainly not a valuable facet in modern art. They are free of aesthetic ideology but do not sit easily with contemporary art where all that matters is interpretation. It feels like they are doggedly, unintentionally anti-Art.
It’s this contrast to what one normally sees on the walls at DHG that makes them so powerful. Get up close to them and see how detailed, varied and beautiful they are. There’s one that has neon pink thread, ones with leather binding, some patterned, some figurative, all worthy of time and attention for one reason or another. They are not about ideas in the abstract sense, even if they do evoke a certain warmth and familiarity, though the latter word feels inadequate. Perhaps the feeling rests on the knowledge somewhere in the back of your head, as troublesome and romantic and naive as it is, that these are honest pieces of craft, made with a small but determined purpose; to create a beautiful thing that one can use. They are, as the DHG description says, “unpretentious and modest, full of charm and character”.
Now, here comes the awkward side-step and appropriation you’ve been waiting for. How does this relate to music today? How can we learn something from these chantehs?
Those operating within the music industry right now will be well aware of how little money there generally is. Unless you’re at the very top, you’re probably at the bottom, scraping by. Not in it to make money but certainly not able to afford to lose money either. Whether you’re a musician who can barely get taxi fare to get your gear to a gig or a promoter filled with dread every time the doors open at a gig or a record label head casually wondering how much you’re going to lose on the next record you press, money is a constant worry. There just isn’t enough of it to go around, especially now that it’s mostly provided by tech or beer companies like Samsung and Heineken who, for understandable reasons, don’t want to sponsor your gig to five people at midnight on a Thursday upstairs in Whelan’s.
There is no necessity right now to press records or make CDs or dub out tapes. There are few reasons to do it and a million not to. Technology has moved on and if someone wants your product but doesn’t want to pay for it, they can have it. Your options are limited. Do you manufacture scarcity? Make it only available on a tiny run of vinyl, no digital just because you don’t want people to steal it? If you do that, you limit your audience and it is dishonest. In some cases, you even fuck that audience over. Kassem Mosse recently released a very limited vinyl-only EP on Sounds Of The Universe that sold out in about ten minutes. Copies are now going for €60 or more on Discogs. There’s nothing fair about that.
Do you try to swim against the tide and make it available on all the streaming platforms and get the vinyl out into all the shops and spend money on PR? You’re either brave or a fool but I wish you luck either way. It’s not going to be easy. The question becomes what does one have to do to make people care? How do you manufacture interest and attention? How do you convince an audience to part with cold, hard cash? And when you’re using terms like “manufacture interest”, “convince” and “make people care”, you know you’re not talking about art or craft any more, you’re talking about commerce and advertising.
There is no solution to that dichotomy, no easy way to fold it so the ethics and the bottom line meet in perfect harmony. You almost have to forget about one or the other, or at least to relegate it to the very back of your mind. And this is where the chantehs come in. Things that we sometimes lose sight of in the face of money and industry – like honesty, craft, personality, beauty – are central to their charm, to what makes them feel warm and familiar even though they are new to us. Our tendency is often to view music with a strong set of expectations, whether as a producer, facilitator or consumer (business speak, eh?), that involves how many copies it’s going to sell, how many people are going to show at the gig, who is going to write about it in the press, what kind of legacy it will have, what life-moment it will soundtrack, etc. Chantehs were not made with these expectations.
I do not want to over-romanticize the chantehs but the impulse to create “something beautiful that is of use” must be central to any great work of art and it is an impulse that will translate across time and geographic space. If one’s interpretation of beauty and use is deeply personal, then there will be nothing to worry about. By removing the concern for sales or success, the focus is on the object itself and how it works in the context of your own mind. When someone else eventually hears it, it will then appear as a gift, a personal message passed from one to another. The whole aim will have been achieved in the making and everything that happens after, how what you’ve made use of is used by others, will be a secondary layer of learning and surprise. Without that first kernel of honest, personal craft, nothing real can follow.
Chanteh – Tribal Textiles From Iran is at the DHG until January 30th. Admission is free. http://www.douglashydegallery.com/exhibition.php?intProjectID=169
