And this lunchtime I went out to Borough Market to see a celebrity buy some fish. It was art, apparently.
The celebrity in question was Jude Law, and he was there to re-enact this as part of an art piece called The World As A Stage.
I have to say that the re-enactment didn’t look quite like the video (I’m not sure that Borough Market ever looks quite as peaceful as that, and definitely not on a Friday…), but it was interesting to watch nevertheless. When I got there it was just loads of people standing around in one spot by the fishmongers and the fruit and veg place where I do my shopping. Every now and again a car or a van would try to get down the road, and the crowd would reluctantly part to let it through, before scurrying back to absorb the space.
As an examination of our obsession with celebrity, it was quite interesting to watch (although I don’t believe that that was the intended point of the art). I took up a spot at the back by the fish shop, where I overheard a TV cameraman discussing with his reporter where to go to get the best shot “We know he’s going to go in the shop and buy some fish, so why don’t we stay here?” they said to each other.
You could tell that Jude Law had eventually turned up not because you could see him, but because you could see the crowd swarm around him and follow him towards the shop, camera phones, digital cameras and SLRs held aloft to capture blurry photos of a bloke off-of some films.
As I was standing quite close to the fish shop, and as I happen to be continuing my pointless internet-based photo a day project, I took some of my own blurry photos of a bloke off-of some films in the process of buying some fish from a fish shop.
And then I heard someone behind me say something like “where did all these tall blokes come from?” so I stepped out of the way to let them through, showing them what a blurry photo of a man buying some fish looks like as I did so, and headed back to the office.
Jude Law. Buys some fish.
Surrounded by cameras.
Yeah. So is this art?