Created and presented by Panther: Sarah Rodigari and Madeleine Hodge
Until Saturday 25th October
Both Madeleine Hodge and Sarah Rodigari are friends of mine. They, as far as I know, don't know that I write this. This happened once before after I reviewed Tom Holloway's 'Red Sky Morning', Tom read it and the jig was up. He didn't, you see, know that I was writing a blog. More correctly, I hadn't told him. Then he read it. I was embarrassed.
'Exercises in Happiness' occurs in a gallery-like space. I was there Saturday evening. It was hot and it was crowded. I found myself informally queueing in order to complete the exercises. It made me cross.
As has been written by others this is a diverting installation / intervention, and it is quite submersive. I think this misses the point though. Or it does to me at least.
What I got, and this really might be more revealing psychologically than I would like it to be, was the absolute flimsiness and futility of a search for happiness alone - as a means to an end. You potter about in a garden, something I usually love doing, and all I was thinking about was the drainage of a container within a gallery and how the plants really don't stand a chance. You make awkward conversation with a stranger using topics from a little glass bowl, while eating trifle and rather than begin a conversation, it halted one that I was already having with a stranger. I sat for about 20 minutes trying to tune up a left-handed electric guitar and when I finished, I had to start again because the tuning had not held. I went into the video room, pressed 'next' on the computer screen after I had recorded my first answer, nothing seemed to happen, I got impatient and clicked it again and missed the next question and had to record my response to the second question where my response to the third one should have been. I read people's responses to 'One Thing You'd Like To Do before You Die' and got despondent because zero population growth is really not going to happen.
There was an activity (actually a couple) that I didn't get to due to aforementioned overcrowding, which I wanted to get to because it alluded to something that I like exploring. The activity was watching porn. The reason I liked its inclusion is because porn, by its very nature, is generally somewhat exploitative. And I believe that our desire for happiness, our belief that it is a birth right, comes at a cost to others, to society, to the earth, to ourselves.
Now, and I'm going to tread carefully here, I do not believe that happiness itself comes as a cost, just the pursuit of it on its own. Happiness isn't an endpoint, its a byproduct. It doesn't come at a cost when it's achieved as a byproduct, but by god we exploit many things in order for us to happy. And in presenting that exploitation, that flimsiness, futility and emptiness, I believe, lies the success of this piece.
