Jeremy Deller is our patron saint

The History of the World, © Jeremy Deller

Jeremy Deller is our patron saint, and delivers us to the intersection of British art and politics, where we bask in acid house legends and bathe in the counterculture’s afterglow.  

Deller’s art is gently radical and wildly knowing. Who else can so beautifully link British industrial history and the Miner’s Strike to music, youth, and club culture? Who else understands that Our Hobby is Depeche Mode?

Depeche Mode

Everybody in the Place

The dance floor has a rich history of being the site of cultural expression, and Deller recalls the provincial nightclub, former factory, community hall, and British countryside as the consecrated spaces of British rave culture.

Everybody in the Place, Deller’s film from 2019, narrates stories of social and political revolution from the pre-pandemic world to a classroom of bemused students. There is a freedom that dwells within the footage from long lost raves and parties; the absence of inhibiting smartphones is noted by Deller’s young audience, who seem almost wistful at the complete release that washes over the faces of the partygoers at Shelley’s Lasderdome in Stoke-on-Trent in November, 1991.

Will music and club culture still be the sites of social and political critique, post-pandemic? Where are this generation’s rebellious youth and social agitators who will propagate a new dance floor revolution? Where have all our parties gone?  

Something has been lost along with those all-night, all-day, all weekend parties. The nostalgia may be fleeting, but the revolution rolls on.