Hello

This blog is part of the ESA Social Club ‘Multitude’ programme taking place at Patrick Studios, Leeds UK from 7-23 Nov 2008.

We hope you can join us during those dates but if not we will try to share some of the things we have been up to here, and please do comment on what you have seen!

The full programme is posted on our web site: www.esaweb.org.uk

We have also created a flickr group for people to join and share their ‘collections’: www.flickr.com/groups/multitude

Do have a look around at what we are up, and pop back as things change! In the meantime here is some more background info to ‘Multitude’

Thanks Jon

Multitude

East Street Arts (ESA) present their third Social Club: Multitude, a series of contemporary art events inviting artists, writers and audiences to explore our relationship to objects and the emotions that connect us to our future heritage.

Multitude continues ESA’s Social Club events programme and will investigate 21st Century Britain’s consumerist society. With the rise of Capitalism and the West’s ‘disposable income’ culture, we purchase, consume, cast aside, hoard and collect things searching for the ideal, the latest gadget, status symbol, investment and entertainment buzz. It seems individuals and society are defined by what they own, their identities inextricably intertwined with ideas of possession.

Within this abundance of objects, the phenomenon of hoarding, collecting, cataloguing, archiving and re-cycling creates a conveyor belt of clutter. Why do we feel the need to hold on to things, hoard and search out additions to a growing collection? From scientific and anthropological collections in museums to investment collections of contemporary art to sentimental hoarding of objects to keeping things because you can, collecting is often regarded as a malady, a madness that makes humans, human.

These ideas of consumerism, collecting and hoarding will be explored over the course Multitude through a variety of socially engaged art events, exhibitions, artist commissions and residencies.