These are the bald facts are: the UK is – in all likelihood – on may 29. March escape 23 PM British time from the EU. In the Referendum on the EU membership of the United Kingdom on the 23. June 2016 voted 17 410 742 people in favour of leaving the EU, 16 141 241 voted for the whereabouts. Since then, hardly anything more, as it once was. Politicians on both sides continue to argue, the demonstrations go on, the anxious Wait continues, but how will the artists react?

The writers were the fastest thing. Here is a quote from the 2016 novel “autumn” by Ali Smith: “across The country people believed that it was the Wrong one. Throughout the country the people believed it was the Right thing to do. Across the country, the people felt really lost. Across the country, the people believed that they had really won. Across the country, the people thought they themselves had done the Right thing and other people have done the Wrong thing. Across the country, people have looked up on Google: What is the EU?“

Smith’s novel reads like an Elegy on Britain’s relationship with Europe. Your “autumn” is a very cold Season. Even colder, Sam Byers “Perfidious Albion” by 2018, in a dystopian novel, written with a controlled rage, in the East of England housing estate plays, a few years after the Brexit. Extreme right-wing entrepreneurs have gained the control over information technologies. Byers’ Vision is dark and deeply repulsive. “Middle England” by Jonathan Coe, also to 2018 published, strikes a lighter tone. It is the third part of his family Saga set in the Midlands. There are different reactions to the Referendum. The tensions threaten to shatter long-standing friendships, xenophobia rears its ugly head.

Schottlan is skeptical of Northern Ireland anxious

In the year 2017 published by the “Guardian,” a series of “Brexit Shorts” , with very different perspectives. Skeptical of the view in Scotland in A. L. Kennedy’s “Permanent Sunshine”; a timid Northern Irish access in “Your Ma’s a Hard Brexit” by Stacey Gregg; a reumütiger Euro-sceptics of the upper class in David hare’s “Time To Leave”. The only Pro-Brexit-opinion was in “Go Home” to hear from Charlene James.

The first artistic response to the result of the referendum was probably born the music on the Album “Scobberlothchers” by Momus, alias Nick Currie, in Edinburgh, and now in Kreuzberg resident. He writes the lyrics, such as the UK, “” was sailed away, and rails against “wild sheep, Sluts and morons, Bozos, Drunks and vicious, ferocious Bully-herds, sneering villains,” a note on the violence of extreme-right activists. The Scots voted 62 percent for remain.

A delayed reaction and resonance was Damon Albarn. His Album “Merrie Land” (2018) is a sad reflection on the challenges of the English identity, an Orwellian sigh. A less pessimistic view of the composer Matthew Herbert, who is celebrating his “Brexit Big Band” Europe-wide cooperation. He says with Regret: “In an increasingly fragmented and divided political climate, in which tolerance and creativity are threatened, we want to be with our friends and neighbors in solidarity.”

In an open letter that was sent in October 2018 , Prime Minister Theresa May, warn prominent musicians from the adverse impact of Brexit on the music industry. The action was organized by Bob Geldof, have signed, among others, Brian Eno, Simon Rattle, Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn.

And the visual artists? Bob and Roberta Smith (the amusing double – Pseudonym of Patrick Brill) is expressed explicitly: “Brexit is at the end of the British art as we know it”. And he compares the Brexit with other historical schisms: “We have the research experience already, as Henry VIII from Rome”. You see: Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg do not have the monopoly on Exaggerations.

There are, of course, Bizarre. Sculptor Grayson Perry has made vases, which he calls “Matching Pair” – with the football player Gary Lineker and of the murdered members of Jo Cox in the Remain Version, with Nigel Farage and Churchill on the Leave page. Perry tries to appease: “We have much more in common than separates us.”

“we can ask Yes people the same, whether it should pay taxes”

criticized the Unusual, the British sculptor Tony Cragg throughout the Brexit process. “I love my country, but an exaggerated nationalism is a Testament to the inability to develop a larger perspective.” The Turner prize winner, said in a Reuters interview, it was a fatal mistake of then-Prime Minister David Cameron, the Brexit Referendum to be recognised at all: “This is the Same as a referendum about whether we should pay taxes.” Long as he had been for a second Referendum. And now he seems to give up: “I thought that you can revise. But what good is that now? An endless bitterness!“

In the past year, there was an impressive exhibition at the Firstsite gallery in Colchester, where Scott King is presented with a brilliant sarcasm, and a new type of British holiday camps: the past is now a place where everyone’s nostalgia needs to be addressed.

In the British cinema of the fear of the financial impact of Brexit on international film productions. But in the Dark of the cinema halls, the Leavers appear at the same time most happy. Christopher Nolan’s “the”, Jonathan Teplitzkys “Churchill” and Joe Wright’s “Darkest Hour” Dunkerque films, in which the traumas of the Second world war, were re-examined. In these cinema epics of longing for the age, size and independence can account for up to Brexit-Propaganda.

And yet: The old England, as it says in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, might be Dying. The people are exhausted. Or as it is expressed in a figure of Ali Smith in “the fall”, and thus millions of Britons from the soul speaks: “I am of this poison tired. I’m tired rage. I’m the nasties tired … “

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“the Merrie country” of The Good, The Bad & The Queen Soundtrack to the Brexit-Blues

Nadine Long

John Quin, born in Glasgow, lives in Brighton and Berlin. He writes for the “Art Review” and “Frieze”.