Politics reigned supreme at Glastonbury Festival this year; UK punk duo Bob Vylan controversially led the crowd at the West Holts Stage in a chant of “Death, death to the IDF,” and ageing Canadian rocker Neil Young tried to ban the BBC from broadcasting his headline set live, accusing it of being “under corporate control.” Then there was Belfast rap group, Kneecap, who were allowed to perform despite MPs, including the UK prime minister, calling for their act to be pulled due to their pro-Palestinian remarks and previous terror offense charge.
Some of the art on show at the world’s biggest music festival over the weekend was just as politically charged, including Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger’s anti-fascist installation at the Terminal 1 stage.
Wallinger’s work, titled Jungle Gym and part of the exhibition “No Human is Illegal” curated by Oriana Garzón, put the focus on suffering children in Gaza. The artist said in a statement that the children “in this world have no say or no power.” His labyrinthine installation was also a commentary on the challenges faced by migrants, including the Kafkaesque bureaucracy they often face. Wallinger only used the color cyan in the new work, which is also known as “Unicef blue.” “Unicef presents some kind of hope in the midst of this all,” he said.
The charity estimates that 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza in the almost two years since the Israel-Hamas war broke out.
At Terminal 1, which debuted at Glastonbury with a show rumored to have been curated by Banksy, festivalgoers were given a taste of the migrant experience at the British border. Upon entering, visitors were forced to answer a question from the British citizenship test and were sent to the back of the queue if they got it wrong. They then passed through a cabin designed like a refugee camp, before entering Jungle Gym.
“The installation binds this vision of childhood and play, with a jungle gym at the centre of it, but the whole thing has been occluded by a maze of chainlink fencing,” Wallinger said. “I wanted to make something that had an ideal of childhood, but then [contrasted by] the actuality for so many people.”
He added that, while making the installation, he “was thinking about the children in all this… And at the same time, I was thinking about the UN and Unicef, and some bodies of hope that have impact, but also these superpowers that attempt to stymy that at every turn.”
Garzón told The Art Newspaper that this year’s curatorial message at Terminal 1, which was made using materials salvaged from Heathrow Airport, is more vital than ever. “This is the first generation in humanity that has seen a genocide being televised,” she said. “I feel that we are in a state of shock, because we didn’t see this kind of fascism coming so fast, but we need to wake up really quickly.”
Many of the artists performing at Terminal 1 were migrants themselves. “Our space here is a safe space for the migrant community, and we cannot have a better canvas than Glastonbury Festival in the middle of the [British] empire,” Garzón said.
Before the festival, which saw 210,000 people descend on Worthy Farm in Somerset, opened its doors, its organizers were sent a “private and confidential” letter signed by 30 leading names in the music industry. They called on them to remove Kneecap from the line-up. One of the band’s members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, was recently released on bail after being accused of raising a flag in support of terrrorist group Hezbollah.
Garzón added: “Organisers are very conscious about it all; Kneecap represents how divided the music industry is. The festival has never had to have a big meeting to talk about a band, and they have had to do that [with Kneecap]. We are in a very critical moment for lots of reasons—now more than ever. That’s why we must deliver our message that ‘No Human is Illegal.’”
Made in Donkey also make a splash at Glastonbury
British art activist group, Led by Donkeys, also turned heads at Glastonbury, which ran from Thursday to Sunday. The group’s billboard at Block9, a section of the festival known for its immersive stage designs and diverse music genres, featured the message “Send them to Mars… while we party on Earth.” The artwork featured next to depictions of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Kier Starmer wearing space suits as they walked toward a rocket.
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Ben Stewart, James Sadri, Oliver Knowles and Will Rose, who make up Led by Donkeys, told the Guardian about the thinking behind the project: “Elon Musk and the tech bros say they want humans to become an interplanetary species. They say the great priority of humanity should be to colonise Mars. That’s not just mad, it’s dangerous. It encourages the notion that Earth is temporary and expendable, that we don’t need to cherish and protect it because we can just move on. In reality Earth is the only place where humanity can thrive. The problem is, we’re trashing it.”
“If Musk and Bezos really want to live on Mars, fine, go for it, do it. Just don’t expect the rest of us to come with you,” they added. “That’s why we’ve built a rocket at Glastonbury so we can send them to Mars while we party on Earth.”
