Gilbert and George try to explain

What a joy it was to watch Gilbert and George being interviewed by Edmund Capon, on the telly, on ABC1 this afternoon, on the TV show Big Ideas. I believe a longer version of this interview can be viewed through the Big Ideas web site. As I've written before, I believe these unique and eccentric artists and spouses must both be on the autistic spectrum (perhaps George more than Gilbert). In many ways they typify autistic talents and autistic lifestyles and autistic values. They seek tolerance for their eccentricities and non-standard sexual orientation, but in politics and manners there is a definite conservtism. Their art is highly original and sometimes shocking, and they place a high value on freedom and the rights of the individual, while at the same time their highly ritualized lifestyle appears to contradict all this. As Gilbert and George tried to explain, there is no paradox. A lifestyle that is the same every day is a lifestyle that makes room for as much intellectual freedom as anyone can enjoy. Intellectual freedom is not about where you are in space, where you go on holidays or where you are at any particular time of the day. Intellectual freedom is all about where your mind is. A very predictible and automatized day leaves the mind unoccupied by trivialities and the banal details of everyday life, allowing it the freedom to work on things that really matter, work that will perhaps be remembered long after one is lying in one's grave. Gilbert and George have gone a long way towards explaining why intelligent autistic people like to live ritualized, unchanging and rigid lives. Do you want to understand Asperger syndrome? Do you want to know why we do the things that we do? Don't waste your time with text books written by non-autistic people who can only guess. Just ask one of us.

Gilbert and George's Manifesto For Life
Big Ideas
ABC TV
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2010/02/24/2823675.htm

My previous blog post about Gilbert and George
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2009/11/gilbert-and-george-i-like-their-style.html