Artista

Jeremy Deller

The work is a graphic and textual portrayal of the history, influence and context of acid house and brass band music. Adopting the form of a flow diagram, it suggests that there are social and political echoes and points of confluence between these two musical movements that date from different eras; acid house being a post-industrial movement of the late 20th century, and the brass band movement dating from the industrial era of the 19th century. The work is produced by printing the image of the diagram onto a carpet. What looks like a casually handwritten flow diagram is something that has been carefully researched, composed, drawn and printed. Although the floor or wall drawing can be any size, the artist has specified that it should induce a sense of involvement in the viewer.

Will Bradley, writing about the work in 1998, stated that for Deller ‘the two most important phenomena of the last fifteen years were the miners’ strike and the start of the acid house scene’. The History of the World knits these two events together through two apparently diverging forms of music. Both forms are voices that in different ways dissent from the prevailing political and social order. By bringing the two forms together in this way, Deller illustrates how such dissent is articulated in a wider context, charting a flow that details the influences on acid house and brass bands as an expression of a move towards what Carl Freedman has described as a ‘more community-based culture’.