The wise fool of Shoreditch

Independent, The (London), May 17, 1998 by James Sherwood

DONALD Parsnips' Daily Journal is an absurd A6 eight-page cartoon newspaper. Hand-made every working week day and photocopied 100 times, it is distributed free of charge on the streets of London by artist Adam Dant to unsuspecting passers by. Dant, the man behind Donald Parsnips, has not missed a Daily Journal since its inception in 1995. Even when Dant travelled to Cairo, Donald Parsnips was faithfully produced on papyrus and handed to bemused Egyptians. For those unfamiliar with Donald and Dant, the question is why?

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"The Donald Parsnips Daily Journal is part of a broader art work. I will produce the last one on the eve of the millennium and then it will be completed," said Dant, 30, from the Shoreditch flat/studio/gallery he calls "The Gallerette." Donald Parsnips first reared his cartoon head in Paris, where Dant had a studio during his Royal College of Art days. "It was the time of the French elections in 1991. I had been playing with the whole concept of flyposters and political messages in public space. So I invented my own candidate for the election called Donald Parsnips and flyposted Donald propaganda around the city."

The Parsnips agenda - "Always of the now. For the then & with thorough referrals to the other" - is a combination of Monty Python humour and Stressed Eric social comment. "People inevitably feel threatened when they are approached in a public space," says Dant. "They have been conditioned to believe an approach is aggressive. I'd imagine some of the recipients of Donald Parsnips think it is a flyer from some religious cult. It is only when (and if) they read the Daily Journal that their expectations are shaken." Vintage Parsnips from an April issue boldly proclaims, "As usual not ordinary. Predictable in its unexpectedness." Donald has achieved cult status in the art world for his absurd guerrilla tactics. For example, Dant approached the Levi store on Regent Street to mount an exhibition in their basement last year. He recorded One Thousand Sung Artworks for World Peace on individual tapes, and sold them in a record shop installation. "You know how club anthems provoke mass hysteria and a collective high?" says Dant. "Well, I thought I could turn that idea on its head and make individual tapes of a song you could buy for your own personal high." Each song has a bizarre Parsnipsesque title like "You Seem Like A Nice Snob" or "Tossed Off Quietly." In an excerpt from "Irresponsible Behaviour," Dant sounds uncannily like Noel Coward. When asked why he didn't send a demo to Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys to go on the new Coward tribute album, Dant reveals, "He's heard a Donald Parsnips demo. Janet Street Porter bought one at the private view." Dant has taken Donald Parsnips to Berlin, Rome, New York and Cairo, but reserved the most elaborate Parsnips project for Donald's birthplace, Paris, last year. "In three weeks I initiated the Donald Parsnips Academy for the Improvement of the French Language," he says. "I advertised for students to attend my Academy in the cafes of Paris and set up seminars to invent a thousand new French words. Then we tried to introduce them into the daily lexicon." The Parsnipsism roppain is roughly translated as a croissant bigger than any other in the shop. A student of the Parsnips Lycee would go into a patisserie and request a roppain. Having had it explained to him, the baker would understand the term when a student used it the next day. And voila! A new word. Once completed, the Parsnips Lexicon de 1000 Paroles Nouveaux was printed as a book (although only five hundred were produced) and exhibited at the Galerie Brighi. Dant then donated the book to the Biblioteque National, where it remains to this day. Search for the method in this madness and Dant will tell you the French- speaking nations were holding a meeting in November last year to discuss the propagation of the French language. "Donald Parsnips was helping them out," says Dant, all innocence. In reality, Dant is using Donald Parsnips the way Shakespeare used the fool in his plays: sweetening the pill of criticism with comedy. Take We Found a Painting by Damien Hirst in a Skip, the title of one of Dant's exhibitions at the Gallerette. It made the front page of the Guardian, Damien Hirst and his dealer Jay Jopling tried to block the use of the artist's name and, most satisfyingly, Dant showed us just how humourless Brit artists can be underneath all that beer-swilling bonhomie. Call The Gallerette on 0171 739 8117

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The wise fool of Shoreditch

Independent, The (London), May 17, 1998 by James Sherwood

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