How a work of art became a campaign for London Mayor
It was a publicity hunter’s dream that turned into a nightmare. When Ken Livingstone’s election team asked an Islington gallery owner to host an auction to fund his re-election campaign, he could not refuse.
Instead, he tried to subvert the event - by launching his own off-the-wall, fictitious candidate. And so the Assistant, aka Abraham Thunderwolf, was born, and immediately set about creating a rival campaign, via posters and the Internet.
But since launching the bid, the people behind the Assistant have read the small print in the election rulebook. It stipulates that London requires a real, not imaginary, leader. If the Assistant succeeds in the election’s initial stages, he will have to reveal his identity.
Which means the artist, real name Steve Lowe, may really be in with a chance of becoming an unwitting - and unwilling - Mayor.
Lowe explained that initially, the reasons behind his choice to host the auction and then to launch his own candidate were to draw attention to his gallery and his artists.
He said: “Being unscrupulous I thought, ‘Oh, publicity, yes.’ Then I thought that, being artists, we like to be critical outsiders. I decided to find some way of giving them the opportunity to back out without me saying no. So we launched our own bid.”
But this did not deter the Mayor from holding the auction at The Aquarium gallery, on Farringdon Road. Apparently, he rather liked the idea.
“Ken’s advisor really loved the idea, and so did Ken,” said Lowe. “I think it’s very brave of him to have done something like that.”
The Assistant’s campaign is being funded by sales of posters outlining his policies. Typical party lines range from the innocuous “Peace, beauty and truth: the Assistant loves you” to the more forceful “Democracy is slow! Dictatorship is fast! Fast is good. Slow is bad.”
Lowe’s idea was to turn the machinery of politics on its head. For him, the posters highlight the absurdity of slogans and the homogeny of ideas from all the parties. “Modern politics is very short on ideology. It’s about management, administration, and trying to second guess the electorate,” he said. “It’s like consumerism. It’s not really offering people something different. We invented the Assistant to throw the machinery of politics back in their faces.”
But as life imitates art, Lowe’s campaign is gathering force, and this could carry him, in the guise of the Assistant, to City Hall. This prospect is one that Lowe claims he had not fully considered.
“The idea was to create artwork out of a real situation. We never wanted to get bogged down in the system. If we get to the next leg I will have to stand up, and then I will get bogged down in reality.
“I don’t really want to get to the stage of standing as a real candidate. I certainly don’t really want to be Mayor of London! All I wanted to do was make people think about the role of Mayor.”
Whether or not he dethrones Ken, the Assistant is contemplating the possibility he will have to run a real campaign. The gallery has the £10,000 required to register its candidate. Now he needs 370 nomination votes, ten from each borough, and his campaigners are getting ready to hit the streets canvassing.
If elected however, the Assistant has some big ideas, including a minimisation of working hours, encouragement for the Arts without over-investment, and the reduction of the 2012 Olympic Games to an “Olympics amateur sports weekend”.
“People don’t understand what the Olympics should be,” he said. “It started out as people getting together to have a bit of fun, and now it’s all about big business bringing funding to London.”
But the most audacious move will be the consolation prize the Assistant will offer to his predecessor.”The first thing the Assistant would do if he became Mayor would be to employ an assistant who had a lot of experience to take over most of the dull boring running of the city. I’d probably give that job to Ken. He has a lot of experience in running London. I think he does an okay job.”
As for his other main rival, Lowe believes he is even more fictitious than the Assistant. “Boris Johnson is really symptomatic of the celebrity culture,” said Lowe. “He’s a made up character like the Assistant. Boris is not real for a reason, as [that way] he sells better. He’s brought to us as a media creation.”
