If You Ask Me
by Fionola Meredith

Recently I was exposed to a hazardous level of performance art at an event in Belfast. Unlike the radioactive substance polonium 210, it isn’t life-threatening. But it can leave you feeling depleted and nauseous.
It’s not that I’d rather have a nice Royal Ulster Academy oil painting of Shaw’s Bridge by Moonlight.

I really wouldn’t. But life’s too short to waste watching some po-faced eejit wearing clingfilm underpants sing The Soldier’s Song translated into Ulster Scots. That’s not a subversive commentary on the politico-religious values which saturate our fractured, vulnerable identities. It’s facile and pretentious guff masquerading as art. But once you’ve been infected by this way of thinking, you start to see the whole world as a kind of hyper-real burlesque. Leave out the nasty improvised weapons, and Michael Stone’s farcical antics with the revolving door at Stormont begin to look like an elaborate piece of performance art. Was he in fact paying homage to the Futurists, those early 20th century artists who staged ‘actions’, yelling slogans and obscenities at their audiences in an attempt to instigate riots?

Never did the cry of ‘no surrender’ sound more surreal than when Stone uttered it from a prone position on Stormont’s front doorstep, as a fabulously red-talonned female security guard bopped him on the head with his own pretend gun. Inside the chamber at Stormont, an air of unreality has long prevailed. Our little fake government up on the hill has a real Alice in Wonderland feel. The never-ending tea party continues with fat salaries for all, and not a fear among them that hey’re late for an important date. Or maybe it’s more like the Matrix, a film well-known for its evocation of a sinister artificial reality.

Watch Big Ian somersault spectacularly through the air to avoid Gerry’s scintillating blast of republican history. See Gerry’s cart-heeling countermove as Ian hits back with a suffocating gust of obscure Presbyterian theology.

Meanwhile, big decisions affecting our lives here in Northern Ireland are taken elsewhere, in the real world. That’s why thundering editorials styling Peter Hain as an arrogant colonial viceroy who doesn’t give a stuff about good auld dacent Ulster democracy aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Because that’s what happens when our self-indulgent politicians can’t get their act together. We shouldn’t be surprised that the Cheshire Cat is flexing his imperialist claws.

Of course, there’s always an upside. Despite the pious whinging of Jeffrey Donaldson and his colleagues, Northern Ireland will be first in the UK to bring in new regulations protecting gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination when they access goods and services. Our nervous politicians can rest easy though – there seems little chance of militant gays storming evangelical bookshops just yet. Those Helen Steiner Rice gift cards are quite safe.

We live in a crazy parallel universe where the fact that our two main party leaders have at last spoken to each other makes front page headlines. We’ve spent so long down the rabbit hole, we’ve forgotten what reality looks like.

If You Ask Me Archive