So has Outsideleft finally made it? We got press accreditation for Frieze, the gigantic contemporary arts fair in Regent's Park London. That meant that I got to hobnob with the world's art press and had my photograph taken while stroking my chin meaningfully.
When I first went in I forgot that I was still wearing my sunglasses. It was bright inside and my prescription glasses and sunglasses have the same frames so I hadn't noticed. I walked right by the security desk and was called back because they wanted to look inside my bag.
"I'm sorry I didn't see you" I said, and then, jovially, "I must be blind!"
The security guy seemed to think I'd said I was blind because he guided me through by the elbow and kind of released me into the fair.
I almost managed to walk around the whole thing without a single person talking to me. Not one. I could've been a big shot collector or curator. I might even have been writing for a "proper" journal. Didn't somebody want to impress me? Seemed not. I looked at a few things, read the descriptions on the wall, smelled the popcorn.
It might have been when I wandered into the VIP area. Not because I was a VIP but because I had mistaken it for an exhibit. It was like a mass re-enactment of Gilbert and George's Gordons Makes Us Drunk in there but without any of the humour.
Or it might have been when I discovered I had just paid £2.60 ($5) for one very small biscuit.
But after a while I think I did actually lose my sight. Everything began to look the same and all the little galleries became like a vast confusing multi-colored maze that I couldn't seem to find the way out of. I sat drinking coffee, admiring my very expensive biscuit whilst trying to pick out the exit on my floor plan.
Just as I was leaving a photographer from the Guardian asked me to pose in front of a picture and asked if I could just "stroke my chin and look at it closely. Like you're studying it." I am not sure if they used it in their newspaper. I hope not. That would be my critical credibility shot. This piece was very poor art. A blind man could see that.
Safe/Dot Painting, by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset
