On Saturday I participated in something rather unusual.
“The Great Trafalgar Square Freeze” was conceived by just a handful of people merely a month before the event who did little more than spread the word to their nearest and dearest via Facebook. By the time of the event itself, this had grown to over 1000 participants complicit in a ’secret’ game of musical statues aimed at bringing Trafalgar Square to a standstill (pun intended).
The idea behind the Freeze came from the activist group Improv Everywhere, a group that has previously succeeded in freezing Grand Central Station as one of around 70 ‘missions’ they claimed to have undertaken around the world (although mostly in the US to date).
Taking place for just 5 minutes between 3.30-3.35pm last Saturday, participants were told little more than to gather at to Trafalgar Square shortly before 3.30 and listen out for a Nelson-esque trumpeter. When he stopped playing, we were all to freeze on the spot in a (preferably comedy) pose of our choice.
As you might imagine, the lead up to the start of the 5 minute slot was a little nerve wracking given you weren’t sure who and how many of the people around you in the square were participants or merely tourists out for the day enjoying the sunshine. But as the trumpeter sounded the start of the 5 minutes, it became clear that almost everyone around you was taking part in this elaborate game of musical statues (without the music).
On the stroke of 3.30pm, the square fell still in an instant and you were left surrounded by a variety of imaginative, surreal and hilarious poses ranging from skateboarder dudes to women down on one knee proposing to their men and people in mid-chomp on their fruit (look out for the man with the banana in my video). I personally tried to both participate and capture the event simultanously, posing holding my camera aloft only using my fingers to turn it round and pan across the scene around me (holding your arms up for 5 minutes is harder than you’d imagine believe you me!).
For me the event brought a few things to mind:
1. At its most basic level, the Freeze kept up our fine tradition of using our public spaces for what they were intended - grand social gestures, coming together to meet and interact in our cities’ great public spaces.
2. Fundamentally you could say that it was all a load of daft meaningless nonsense achieving little more than giving adults the chance to act like children. This is a good thing.
3. While not a direct protest, the Freeze was reminiscent of other disruptive public gatherings like Reclaim the Streets (or the Poll Tax riots at that same location for that matter!) which have been so effective in bringing people together to act as one to do something that no one individual could do on their own. However, what was different about the Freeze was the way it achieved this. Quietly, confidently, privately even. The power of the individual united to create a tight-loose group with a single purpose but a group that did not require the participants to loose their own individualism to the group. Rather that individualism was encourage, celebrated even, a collection of individuals standing together apart for one moment and one purpose.
4. It highlighted the ever increasing cross over or blurring of the line between on and offline social interaction and relationship or network building. Those of us who are active online community members see this increasingly on a day to basis with the trend towards Social Media Cafes and Geek Dinners. The on and offline worlds are now entirely intertwined, symbiotic and mutually reinforcing, bringing new depth and breadth to human interaction and opportunities in the areas of business development, what we do in our spare time and in this case how we make art.
5. Related to this point, yesterday I spotted a post on Twitter from Jeff Pulver congratulating Dave Troy on the achievement of having his Twittervision and Flickrvision sites accepted into the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For me this is a really exciting development. What this and the Great Freeze tell me is that not only are online social media now being taken out to the masses in new and exciting ways broadening their audience and appeal, not only are online media being viewed as art in their own right, but also we are now clearly living in a mash up world whereby the virtual and ‘real’ are fusing (if not already fused) to the extent by which it is impossible separate the two. It is at this at this point that the opportunities (whether for business, social justice, culture or just pure fun) are endless.
6. Finally, for me this all relates back to a point Hugh MacLeod has been making for sometime around social objects. Whether on or offline, social objects are fundamental to human interaction and creating conversation, relationships and networks, acting as ‘nodes’ or talking points around which social networks are made. In order to succeed in generating debate, nodes must grab people’s attention enough to draw them into conversation.
Now Hugh comes at this very much from a business marketing angle, but for me where his thinking meets what I saw on Saturday is in the world of politics. What the Freeze demonstrated to me was that the power of the Big Idea remains. People still want to be enthused, enthralled and excited. People still want to believe in their ability to participate in making the world a better place. The Freeze showed to me the power of the Big Idea as a social object, a social object capable of capturing people’s imagination, causing them to act no matter how small that gesture is.
Put it this way, when was the last time a politician inspired you to get up out of your seat and say yes I’m going to do my bit? I bet I can take a guess (and no, marching against the war in Iraq doesn’t count!).
