Chris Alton

Chris Alton was a lecturer I found really interesting throughout his practice and how he spoke about his work. The first piece Chris spoke about was his project against the English Defence League stemming from his involvement in Anti-far (an anti-fascists organisation). In response to the raise of the English Defence League Chris created the English Disco Lovers, making a positive version of this group with the same acronym. The slogan for this organisation was 'Unas Mundas, Una Gens, Unus Disco' which was Latin for one earth, one race, one disco, almost making a joke out of the English Defence League and their own slogan, highlighting his disagreement with the group. When creating the English Disco Lovers Alton's aim was to make his group more popular then the English Defence League, to do this he began making memes spreading the English Disco Lovers across social media and made advertisement such as posters and videos of the English Disco Lovers dancing at an English Defence Leagues rally. After a year the English Disco Lovers became the top search on google for about a month and many people including some English Defence League members actually joined his group. 

Another piece Chris showed at the lecture was a project based of Michael Ashcroft, which began by a long process of studying Ashcroft and making a diagram all about him, his influences and leads stemming from him. From his research Chris found out that when Michael Ashcroft was younger he tried to manage a rhythm and blues band called trident. In response to this Alton decided to make a project that would make this band seem like a big existence. He made a rhythm and blues album dedicated to this and began advertising the band on medias, such as documentaries, fan blogs and spoke about it on a radio. Further from this he made a room dedicated to the band, containing merchandise including posters and trident T-shirts. 

A particular piece that I liked by Chris was a project he created when he was applying for university and was told he was not being interviewed, but instead had 48 hours to make a piece of work. Alton talked about how he grew up skateboarding and due to this he feels like he looks at things in his environment in a certain way, analysing whether something is useful or not and whether it was designed to be useful. In response to this Chris made a bench that was almost anti-useful, you couldn't sit on it, lay on it or even skate on it. Alton left this bench in public watching people attempt to sit on it, including a man who stepped outside of a pub to answer a phone call and attempted to place his beer on the bench, of course it fell off and the man was absolutely devastated. He took the piece further, trying to find a way this bench could be used which led him to making a game only for this bench. Chris and his friends began playing ping pong against the bench, the game was seeing how long you could keep it going. 

Overall I really like Chris Alton's work and felt it related to my own work. I found his work with the English Disco Lovers interesting due to the fact that many people actually joined this group and left the English Defence League, not even knowing that this was an art piece. This use of natural audience interaction really interests me and interaction is something I am currently working with myself also Chris' use of social media to do this is something I may look at experimenting with myself.