The fifth edition of the Festival of Alternatives and the Left (FALIŠ) concluded in Šibenik with a public interview with Phil Collins, an English artist, leftist, and activist who spoke about his latest project of relocating the statue of Friedrich Engels from Ukraine to Manchester with the aim of ‘bringing Engels home.’ The artist criticized today’s British society, which he describes as a laboratory for the persecution of the poor.
The demolished statue of Engels was purchased by Collins and transported by truck from Ukraine, all documented in a video documentary that will be aired on the BBC in October. While transporting the statue, he passed through another significant location, the German city of Wuppertal, where Engels was born and where he is ‘celebrated throughout the city, unlike in Manchester.’
“I wanted to create a project that is understandable to everyone, not something in a museum out of reach of the public, but something that speaks about memory, loss, and forgetfulness. Engels is a figure for most people; there is something in him that makes people love him. He is a capitalist during the day who makes money, and at night he is a communist. Engels financed Marx; he is the one who enabled him to write the work Capital and finished and published it,” said the English artist, namesake of the popular Genesis singer.
He explained how he searched for statues throughout the former USSR and found the sought-after ones in Ukraine. “Given the anti-Soviet policy, all statues were removed, demolished, and discarded. In conversations with people, many said they didn’t know what to do with them, so after demolition, they would hide them, because they say ‘we removed them because the law requires it, but you never know.’ Most understood the essence of my project, to take the demolished statue and find it a home in Manchester,” Collins said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_3AeCWjsy8
British society is a laboratory for the persecution of the poor
He also reflected on the situation in Great Britain, which he says is a “laboratory for the persecution of the poor,” explaining that his interest in Engels is of a generational nature.
“People of my age were influenced by Margaret Thatcher, who was celebrated in the south of Britain and hated in the north and Scotland. The 1980s were marked by insidious measures to incapacitate the welfare state, and comparing Engels’ book The Condition of the Working Class in England from 1844 to today, we see many connections,” claims Collins.
The recognized artist criticizes the false image the world has of British society.
“If you look at what we export, it is entertainment, music, and television that portray the aristocracy and Harry Potter. The reality for most is a contract for work, a type of contract in which the worker does not know if they will work tomorrow.
Series dealing with the working class have disappeared from British screens; musicians do not sing about events on the street, problems, music is not socially conscious, but light and speaks of romance.
Entertainment has replaced news, and that is why with my projects I want to bring back the idea of what was once normal and what is the everyday existence that the news should be talking about,” Collins stated.
The recognized artist was interviewed by columnist Jurica Pavičić, highlighting that he is one of the most intriguing British artists of today. Collins’ first artistic video was created in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis, then in 2002 he traveled to Baghdad where he filmed the so-called Baghdad Screen Tests just before the start of the Iraq War. His most famous work is They Shoot Horses from 2004, filmed with nine Palestinians in Ramallah. His latest work is the “return” of the statue of Friedrich Engels from Ukraine to Manchester.
On the last day of FALIŠ, on Saturday, the book ‘Stalin’s Killers, Tito and Krleža’ by Boris Rašeta was presented, and a round table ‘Is the Left Allowed to Govern?’ was held, which rounded off the four-day program of the 5th Festival of Alternatives and the Left, which took place under the sign of commemorating the centenary of the October Revolution.
