I saw its smile and I hated it then. Just sitting there in its smug complacency. It was so ignorant, smiling like the world was a chocolate and roses with a soft caramel center instead of a warzone with boiling magma just under its crator puckered surface. People are dieing everyday. How many death will it take before he sees too many people have died. Does he not look up and see the thunder clouds. Does he turn his head and pretend he dosen't see? Is that a crocodile smile hiding denial? That smiling face! What does it know that I don't? No its him who dosen't know. Sitting there in slumped in inner peace. Dosn't He watch TV or read newspapers or even look out the window? He is so seperate from my reality and a good deal of other peoples I should think too. How can he bare to sit in his oasis when there are so many people wandering the desert. I hated its happyness more than the suffering of others. Should I tell him the bad news? should I shout it into its ears, if it even has ears! Does it not hear the screams? Does it muffle out voices lost on the wind with gentle and calming chiming music?
But then I thought to myself, ultimatly we all want happyness. Everyone wants it, isn't that true. And we don't want suffering. Nobody wants suffering so how could I wish it upon this small beatiful man. Every sentient being has a right to happyness and yes there are those who are suffering day in and day out. suffering from oppression and violence. or more abstract pains jealousy and suspicion and yes we should have compassion for these people however we shouldn't let dampen our spirt. Me suffering on their behalf isn't going to make their situation any better. People don't need a maytre they need a friend, who is benevolent who has happyness and inner peace to share. Who is not just borrowing a little bit of your suffering for a short time
I relised I was profoundly jealous. Jealous of his tender eyes and his sweet smile. When had I lost these? When did i decide it was a good idea to get rid of them? Why do I assume that seeing the worst is always wiser? Yes there is a lot of suffering in the world but each day there is a sunrise well maybe not in antartica but then they have the northern lights or penguins(the biscuits of course I know they live down south) to cheer them up there. Yes there is hate in the world but no one only feels hate. Where there is hate there will always be love. People arn't evil they just sometimes do evil. Even a hardened terrioist loves in his own special way. I looked into his eyes and the pain fell away, love poured in. I swear my heart grew 12 sizes that day. I forgave him for his happyness and most importantly I lernt to forgive myself. I took him to my bossom and let him sup on the sweet warm milk of new born compassion.
I was going to start this blog with a question where are our protest songs? but then with the most cursory of googles I realized the answer was just not on television. Here is one:
I'm not sure if Dan Bern is any good yet because he seems like a knock off version of Bob Dylan but I suppose thats better than a knock off version of Ke$ha and besides I like bob dylan. He wrote some really good songs and I've listened to him since i was but a little scamp and haven't got bored of him yet, which is high praise indeed. Infact most of my musical exploration has been looking for someone better but nothing sticks which is annoying another thing that is annoying is there is no bob dylan on youtube so now I have to buy all his songs and I don't like him that much! really artist should pay the audiance because after all a song thats not being listened to is just a bit of noise and a photo nobodies looking at is (this would be a great oppertunity to insert a catty remark about somebodies work by saying something like a photograph nobodies looking at is probalby by -insert name here- however I don't want to say anything like that because I am really nice guy and I wouldn't want to insult anyone in my class because they are really nice aswell and insulting someone on the internet is very backhanded and cowardly and if I was going to insult someones work I would want to be there to watch them cry because that is always fun maybe I could take a picture of it and put it on my blog because I don't think I have enough examples of my own work on here at the moment.) just a piece of paper on a wall
I suppose I do like him because he is quite funny however this sort of music always strikes me as a little masterbatory in that it dosn't challenge or even inform your beliefs, all it does is pander to them and make you feel smug in your obvious rightness I mean how do those stupid right-wing pigs not get it? haha they are just so stoopid.
but maybe this comes from the fact that I can't let myself just like things because of a childhood of being shot down by my older brother that helped foster my healthy self sketisim that pushes me forward trying to reach an imaginary point where I actually believe what I am doing is good and so instilled into me a burning need for exteral validation so please comment and say how wonderful I am because seriously I am a really nice guy.
Anyway what I was going to talk about is protest because I was gonna make some seriously political art that will break down the walls that the man has built and finally deliever the fundemental freedoms that us poor art students have been stripped of in this totalitralen reigm concontected by the blue blooded cold hearted nazi vampires stooped over their caulderens filled with austerity measures in the dark castles of London town.
London by William Blake
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
If William Blake did folkrock I am sure he would be just as good as Dylan If only they had Myspace or even vinyl in those days but alas no the words are stuck in boring poetry form. Wait didn't The Verve sing this in one of their songs. I can't remember. I am not a big fan of The Verve they are ok to have on in the background but I wouldn't chose to listen to them.
This poem is very present in my thoughts at the moment because after all its about the complex connections between patterns of ownership and the ruling ideology, the way all human relations are inescapably bound together within a single destructive society. These ideas are as present in our times as they were in Blakes. although we now have a wellfare state and we are much richer and the streets are probaly cleaner and we have a better sweage system and we have a more democratic society and we are more tolerate and we have the NHS and other nice things like that.
This is a snarling angry poem that decries the charter'd london own by the few and suffered by the many. It generally states privatation is a bad thing. That all it does is make people feel powerless. The world depicted in the poem is one in which everone is chained by mind forged manacles. If only we could cast off these terrible oppressive manacles. Wouldn't that make for a brighter future? Let us burn the money which has become our false idol and cast out the laws that castigate our natural and pure desires.
Freedom
a peom by an idiot
Freedom is great!
Freedom is walking down the street without the fear of abuse!
freedom is the right to an education!
freedom is the right to have children, as many as you want!
freedom is the right to voice your opinion without the fear of reprisals!
freedom is the right to marry who or what you want!
freedom is the right to believe in any sort of god you want or even none at all!
freedom is the right to your own home!
freedom is the right to not let certain people into your home! (vampires,gypse, ect)
freedom is the right to move freely across boarders!
freedom is the right to choose your own career!
freedom is the right to wear whatever sort of clothes you like!
freedom is the right to put into your body whatever you like!
freedom is the right to have sex with whoever you want when and where you want!
freedom is the right to walk naked down the streets without fear of abuse!
freedom is the right to show children videos of there parents having sex!
freedom is the right to kick old people down the stair!
freedom is the right to suck off other peoples dogs!
freedom is the right to burn down someone house while they are sleeping!
freedom is the right to own your own gun!
freedom is the right to lick all the fruit in the supermarket and then put it back!
freedom is the right to break into someone elses house to use the bathroom!
freedom is the right to abandon your child!
freedom is the right to hyjack a bus and drive it off a bridge!
freedom is the right to put poisonous water snakes into crowded swimming pools!
freedom is the right to free and fair elections!
freedom is the right to bomb airports and set yourself on fire!
freedom is fucking brilliant!
William Blake wrote London at a time of political unrest and reveloution in france. A movement Blake signaled his support for by donning a beret. Has the beret always been a symbol of revloution it seems to appear alot on the heads of reloutionarys like che gu...whatever his name is.
We now live in a time of reveloution how do we show our support to them, a no flyzone. Is this just a symbol of support? Do we have a right to intervien? We haven't a great track record. Can we morally stand by and do nothing? These are some complex and troubling issues which I am going to run away from.
Blake was able to talk forcfully about the state of the world in an affecting way and importantly in a way which did not seem prechy or egoistic. How did he managge that? I could argue that he achieved this through first hand experiance, The book he published it in was called "Songs of Experiance" after all and this was London he was talking about, his home.. Of course he had strong informed opions about it. The poem had the same kind of experiance, integraty and anger that I heard in the poetry of the Afghan people on the BBC world service.
To have a true resonance I think you have to have that first hand experance the TV dosen't cut it and even visiting places can't summon up the same truth. As Jarvis Cocker sang in a 90s pop song:
You will never understand
how it feels to live your life
with no meaning or control
and with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
and they burn so bright
whilst you can only wonder why
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'cause when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
if you called your dad he could stop it all
yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
Is it true that the only life you can truly talk about is your own? How can this be the case when their are more than just biographies in the art world? I would say that we can talk about things other than our lives but we always look at them from the perspective of our lives. This seems relly obvious now that I have said it, so its probably true. Part of the joy of art is being able to look through someone else perspective whether it be strange and alien or reassuringly similar to your own. (I wonder which of the two people really prefere?) In the end art is packaged empathy. Or maybe not.
Well back to Protest Songs
One thing I have a problem with protest songs and other art is that they don't offer any soloutions. "London" is an angry indightment but it gives us no insight for how to escape the cycle that begins with privatisation of the land and then leads to the selling of bodies and souls. Even the way humanity rejovinates itself has been corrupted. Where is the path out of the woods?
Mayby its better for it to be this way. Perhaps artist purpose is to try and accuratly depict the society that we live in and leave the change for someone else to deal with, someone smarter and better informed. where can we find these people they must be around here somewhere?
At the moment we live in what seems like the craziest time for a long time and the world has been consistanly crazy for a long time. Several revolutions, the maddness of the ivory coast which is thankfully coming to an end about 1500 corpses too late, the still unfolding disaster in japan and the sinster arrests in china of writers, human rights lawyers, artists, bloggers and other dissidents. The world is a scary place Never in my life have I been so glad I live in britian. I must have been a particularly charitable dung beetle in my past life.
what right do I have to complain? My life is brilliant
This is confusing for me and I am sure it is just as confusing for everyone else. Because we are angry about what is going on around the world. We are angry about a great many things. People want to do something but they feel impotent.
This is a clip from the film Network a film from 1976 I talked earlier about the poem "London" which was from 1794 and I have talked about things going on right now. The world has always been crazy, things it seems are always worse than ever and even when things are going well we convince ourself the world is as bad as its been, the fear of crime gose up while crimes go down. In the end its not the world thats crazy, its people that are crazy, the world ends everyday for somebody and we are always at the end of history.
The world isn't crazy at worst its indifferent and people go crazy trying to find meaning in it, or just trying to live off it, sometimes trying to rule it. I don't think we've got to get mad we are already quite mad enough.
I was thinking I might organise some protests or events that I can relate to my life about occurenses that I have experianced, and so have a right to talk about perhaps a remeberance of all the times I just missed the bus and had to wait literally minites for the next one or maybe I could light a candle in memory of each time I stubbed my toe. I could do reveloutionary action like I don't know having lunch at a different time or mixing orange squash and rhbenna to make a new ungodly taste explosion.
I have been invloved with only one protests, I have signed a few petions yes but that hardly counts. The only march I have been in was the march against the war in Iraq which was on the whole ignored, the only prootest I can remember succending in this country since then is the one agaist the selling of british forests or was it just english forests. I feel we need to obviously treasure our freedom to protest and I beilieve we have duty to be informed about the world. We need to keep writing songs that satirise the people we think are wrong. I watch a documentary today called "My Brother the Islamist" and It was very strange at some points the group of islamist were just a bunch of regular blokes laughing and joking around but then suddenly they switch and start coming out with the most hatfull rhetoric. People are people and I won't ever understand them anyway I found it incredabily strange these people protesting against their right really to protest. Protesting for less freedom that seems perverse espechally with all the people fighting and dieing for freedom at the moment. When I read what I have written I am ashamed we always want to sound intelligent and witty but instead I feel I sound naive and sloppy. Everyone has to face up to what the sound like on the page, it always sounds better in your head. When you try to talk about the big things you think its not my place and maybe it isn't but I suppose that dosen't mean you can't try. I hope its the trying that counts and in the end thats what protest is about, trying.
I don't think what I have writen is very interesting or concise and I know the spelling and grammer is awful and it dosn't seem to cover any point sufficiently and it dosen't inform or entertain and might seem even tasteless and flippent but look on the bright side at least I have the freedom in this country to write this rubbish.
Well thats done. I hope I didn't sound to self importan't or ignorant or many other terrible things I tend to think of students and the like that try and write this sort of thing anyway I'm done with writting this blog
I wanted to start this blog post with this sketch by Harold Pinter called "Apart From That" 2006 because I think it contains a lot of the material In which I work. This blog is going to be a search for what I am talking about so bear with me imaginary reader.
This sketch connects in my mind connects the ideas I have had this semester with those of the last. It is a technologically mediated conversation, a banal chat over mobile telephone. Pinter is someone who like me had a certain aversion to mobiles and this sketch is a sort of parody of tedious modern phone conversations however there does seem to be something sinister going on under the surface with the mysterious unnamed event and the insistent politeness. It is I feel a nice little tragic piece about peoples inability to truly communicate.
There is I think a theme of suppression, the event which is the real reason it seems they phoned each other is never revealed they both use politeness and interest in the other to dodge the question "how are you really?".
Language has always been the great deceiver and manners has always been a way to avoid conversation and reiterate hierarchies. You must bow lower than me, you have a good strong handshake, you must open the door for the delicate lady.
Manners are a type of grease that keeps society running smoothly and one that can be used to help you slip out of certain situations and slime into others. Boy I sure do wish I had some. Suppression within the banal, the inability to truly communicate (despite all our incredible communication technologies) are the two pivotal ideas of this piece and each one has hung heavy on my mind this year.
This photograph is of the culmination of last semesters work It consisted of 3 video monitors showing various individual body parts interacting with a computer cursor: an eye get repeatedly poked, feet get tickled, a hand tries to grab it with no success...there are 6 video shown on the monitors evenly between them.
There was two projectors on showing a video of various pixulated faces all which have had their eyes replaced with the same pair that move while the faces remain immobile. The faces switch but the eyes stay the same.
The second projector displays a video of several browser windows containing 6 identical mouths which each asks the most popular google searches starting with what, where, why, who, when, or how. All these videos are looped. The final part of the set up was a laptop with a series of interactive computer error messages with slightly dyspian and cyberpunk air to them. The user interactivity however was limited to compliance by pressing and ok button at the bottom of the message box or opting out by not doing anything and therefore not progressing. It was really about the illusion of choice in the face of "progress".
One of the most prevalent ideas in that project was the growing obsolescence of the body as information technology thrives. People are being reduced to words and words are harder to empathize with. It was inspired by the growing unease of my and everyone elses lack of say in the changes that are constantly going on, the fear of being left on the scrap heap with the bodies and the chasm between communication and intimacy. Also the sinister way companies, which are inhuman creatures built of humans, are constantly keeping tags on you. If I was someone in a Hollywood conspiracy film I would say "the question isn't am I paranoid the question is am I paranoid enough!!!" and I would be kind of right.
What does this amount to?
I don't know what it all amounts to. In that project I tried to get over my technophobia but all I did was reinvent it, in a more informed way. Perhaps it I was biased with my eyes and only looked at the parts that frightened me as people tend to do but still after the semester was over I didn't want to think about it anymore so I had a break and did a little exhibition about art. Which is mostly harmless and unthreating.
Now where am I?
Well I knew I didn't want to continue to make art about art, its too self in closed and comfortable. I wanted to find out about things going in the world. I wanted to understand things like the power of the individual in society and how governments work and whats up with the economy. I began looking at Britain to see if we really are the good guys, I read about the weapons and PR Britain and British companies sell to mass murdering dictators and needless to say I began to get a little depressed. Its hard to make art about the real issues so I started thinking about my own lifestyle since that's a nice comfortable place and it is so easy to make art about yourself, in fact you almost can't help it but then I started to feel guilty, trapped and ignorant. I started to feel like a child, when do you even become an adult anyway?
In the end I felt worse than when I finished last semester. I felt incredibly small and powerless like this:
For the last crit I made several videos that did a not so great job of showing these feelings. The film that I spent most time, was a failure in many ways and I'm not interested in resuscitating it. It was however an important exercise in realising that self loathing is not a good base for an artwork plus its simply arrogance to think people will be as interested in myself as I am. We need to talk about the things that are just off that centre.
In this film, the outside world that camera represented came bursting into the flat to find a young person asleep. He has dreams that look like children's drawings. The camera gets bored and start roaming around pointlessly. The young person gets up after several noisy interruptions: alarm clock, phone, doorbell. As he heads downstairs he trips and falls and dies. He then is seen by the camera to be just another object like those in his room. the film ends with the young person looking at his dreams which are now still and their emptiness and stillness is obvious in comparison to the amount of movement in the real life.
After writing out the summery I don't think it sounds that bad maybe it deserves a second chance, perhaps I should develop it a little more and reshoot with a bit more craft.
A more successful film was called "A Dream" which was a very short and very simple film which I think was a more refined and honest little piece:
This film was based more on person experience rather than personal shame and so was more entertaining and perhaps thought provoking. It talks about my fear of the banal. It was filmed in a simple non-flashy way in my own flat with simply natural lighting. Everything in it is perfectly mediocer which fits with he theme. The idea came from my boredom with the phrase "I had a dream last night" being a precursor to some sort of dark or deep insight within films such as Mulholland Drive.
for some reason I couldn't get this video to appear as a wee video screen on the blog. don't know why.
In films like these reality and fantasy merge usually leading to fantasy bleeding into reality in strange freaky sequences, in my film "A Dream" the opposite happens. The mundanity of reality bleeds into the dream so much show that they become one and the same. The dream is no longer some mysterious thing that is ungraspable and magical, the dream becomes a very achievable prophecy. The dream changes from a dream or at least a proper dream into just an extension of the mundanity of the characters life from which now that his dreams have become part of this, there is no escape from. it when he closes his eyes. I think this could be just a scary proposition as facing your nightmares.
If there is one thing art shouldn't be is mundane surely it is my duty as an art student to learn how tackle this implacable foe. I want to take the mundanity of life and turn it into something interesting. If I can't deal with the big issues then I'll have to deal with the very small ones that take up most of our time. In reality the mundane can be just as thought provoking as the celestial and spiritual or the great injustice of civilisations and can indeed reveal deepening truths about them by sneaking your head around them rather than foolhardily running into them head first into them knocking yourself out in the process.
I have been looking into people who explore their own common place experiences lifting them into a new space where some sort of humble truth and boredom cut into each other. I just want to do that.
This is a bit of comic strip by Harvey Pekar and it I couldn't find a better example of what I am now trying to aim at. It succinct yet open ended, it shows the strange trailing mists that connect disparate lives. It talks about mortality and the way it can bemuse your experience even if only lightly brushes past your life. It talks about coincidence and how we attach meaning to things like names. It shows the shimmering arbitrariness of reality in which we all make ripples in. It makes you think about things and it does this with only a few simply words placed upon a few simple and very similar drawings. Its well crafted simplicity and humbleness is in the end what makes it work. Its not grasping for attention or bristling with self importance its just a small bit of thought lifted up to our eyes so we can think about it too.
Pecker was a cult comic book writer who self published a series of comic books called with dry humor "American Splendor". The series is auto-biographical in nature displaying is day today existence as a file clerk Cleveland. and describes the struggle of day to day existence from a working class point of view
"The humor of everyday life is way funnier than what the comedians do on TV. It's the stuff that happens right in front of your face when there's no routine and everything is unexpected. That's what I want to write about."
Yeah same!
I need to find my own point of view which I have mostly done already I want to talk about myself everybody does they just have to tackle the fear of being judged by others, I think you have to accept that you are an idiot but so is everyone, you can't let your work be an ego trip but there is nothing entertaining about humility and besides humility is just a way of showing off, don't worry I am cool with it even though you can feel your ego burning in your cheeks you have to flush it down and be humble because after all, pride is a sin.
People always complain about how everything has been done before. This is just silly piffle. The ultimate resource for anyone who fancies themselves an artist is their own lives, that is the most precious thing people can share, that's why I love people like Harvey Pecker.
Every little minor moment is as individual as snowflakes and we are just snowmen made of these. Please dig a snowball out of your side and through it into my eyes till I cry.
Where does banality come from? To be honest I don't experience it often enough because I am lucky enough to be an art student and have enough social awkwardness to make even the most uneventful conversation an internal drama. There is a lot of stuff packed into the dull tiny minutiae of life.
But going down is path is dangerous because ignoring the massive problems in the world doesn't make they disappear like you when the rubbish gets collected it doesn't magically vanish it goes to a landfill somewhere where it builds into an even bigger problem. If go down this path I run the risk of being terribly well, apart from that. really terribly, terribly, terribly well, you know apart from that, apart from that.
I'll just end this blog with this video since I think this poem seems to strike a balace well between addressing the indivduals life and the ills of the world. C'yah.
Saturday, 26 March 2011
I remember one day I was walking down the beach early in the evening. There was a light breeze blowing lightly but with a strange well travelled force that the air seems to have at the coast. I felt the weight of the sun above me even though the light was beginning to fade. I was aware of the sea covering the earth and yet stopping a few metres from my feet and I could hear it like some massive unfathomable mysterious creature breathing in and out, in and out and I became aware that I was aware of all these things, the shudder of the air that is sound, the whisper of the breeze on my skin, the light from a star that has taken the scenic route to me eyes. I was awash with a feeling of a living breathing reality of a world pulsating with life.
I felt the individual grains of sand moving under my foot falls and thought if an eternity is in a grain of sand how many eternities are on this beach. I felt time I imagined how fast the earth was spinning and falling through space and I suddenly felt so connected with it. I realised that everything is connected and I am part of that cycle.
I wondered at the miracle that the history of a moment is the history of all time and that leaf contains the sun the sky and the earth. But I was most awe stricken by the realisation that I could experience all this, that I could feel it in my bones that my very being was made from the death throws of dying stars, that I myself wasn't an object but was branch of a universal river travelling into the void of infinity constantly changing and flowing that by before a decade is through every cell in my body would be replaced.
I gasped at the epiphany that I wasn't a thing but an idea and it was my perceptions that made me, me, that made a tree a tree and a star a star. I stood a gape at my own God like power. That before we came the world was a chaotic place where energy and matter flowed through the universe in unknown forms but then we came and named the light, separated the heavens and the earth with definitions and saw all the abundance of living creatures and trapped there forms in words.
I realised that we were the creators and that we carry the entirety of existence in our incredible minds.
Just then I realised I had stepped in dog shit and suddenly thought god damn it there is one of those dog poop bins right over there would it have been that much effort really? I mean god damn it fucking lazy bastards ahhhhhhh! and then I wiped my shoe on the grass and tried to clean it in the sea then walked back to the flat with one wet foot making irritating squelching noises.
