sur le motif in Bergby.2 I barely Knew that it was happening until it happened although I was imagining/dreaming that a possible left wing Brexit could be a goer...perhaps I'd have voted leave from a distance but i am sure that had I been in the UK during the build up and experienced the ultra-nationalist winding up it would have been simply obvious that leave was the racist vote or rather racism was employed to secure the leave vote, and it would have to be remain, but not for any loyalty to the European project.

You see I am just now emerging from a self imposed media blackout lasting some 3 years during which I tried to avoid the "news" and certainly adopted a thinking that the abstract knowledge gained via the news media cannot help me in my life and mores to the point, it actually has a limiting effect on my mind and timetable. I still believe that to be the case and I remain adverse to the news media but I now feel like if the news reaches me from the mouth of another then fine but I try not to consume it not least because it is clearly addictive when taken in via the smartphone. Having said that I have reengaged psychologically with the times and the critical context or at least I am open to it in a way that I have not been since the end of the TAS.

I cannot claim to have my finger on the pulse of critical art strategies to fight the powers that be, (my reading stopped with young Mackee and his carrying of the socially engaged torch into the age of Occupy and then stubbing it out on the Wall Street sidewalk!)3 but for what it is worth I have reached an understanding of my own whereby we have emerged out of a farcical post financial crisis transition into the beginning of the inevitable next phase of capitalism. Now that may not be true at all but who gives a dolly fuck about that these days, its how I'm feeling it, its how I've divvied it up and it seems to me and many others that there has been an accelerationist turn of the wheel...to the right and left.4

Now I absolutely must stop that until I have a bit more book notion in the noggin but this accellerationism broadly endorses an embracing and quickening of the logic of capitalism to bring about its inevitable destruction so that humanity can move on. Well one can quite imagine an idea of this type being embraced with wild enthusiasm by every capitalist with lead in their pencil but as I say, there are some left accelerationists so I cant make it out.  Let me just say that many of the recent  political transformations that have shaped our now and seemingly turned the tables on what we thought the world was, Brexit, Trump, the Alt-Right, social media election rigging, the Gerasimov Doctrine5 do make more sense in the light of some of the accelerationist ideas which seem to welcome the destructive.

One tit bit of autobiographical coincidence is worth a mention and it regards Nick Land, the chief thinker of the accellerationist sphere and author of its founding texts the Dark Enlightenment. Now this 'dark enlightenment' is just that, dark and patently racist but you know this Land fella was developing his theories in Leamington Spa, the town from which I emerged.  To think that while I was indulging in some of the delights of the Leamington social scene, Land and a few of his club sat above the cream shop on the Parade scheming this dark enlightenment. I visited this establishment from time to time, the Body Shop I believe (a name that no doubt the amused the Deleuzian Land) and I can still feel the tingle of excitement remembering once as a sassy young cream shop worker boldly took my hand and began gently massaging it with a tester...and up above Land was fantasizing about a space Reich! Look here it would be the easiest thing in the world to dismiss these ideas as a bit Ickey, not pay it any attention, a cinematic vision but we do not have that luxury because this rascist sci fi vision has some powerful backing among the super rich in America and the founders of the alternative right.

These German neighbours of ours have been good to me. Both of them have eyes as collectors of antiques and finery but it is Elizabeth who has the interest in painting. We have exchanged regularly on the subject in faltering Swedish (mine) which she diligently and unflinchingly corrects with the manner of a school master which indeed she is. They have even made some purchases,. In fact ever since my first summer exhibition in 2015 where they immediately purchased a view of Trästa Bron I had up, they have consistently purchased from me year on year. I do not expect this to continue however as they must have four or five of mine now, all sold for modest but I feel respectable sums. She actually seems to like my paintings in and of themselves and when I once tried to explain to Elisabeth the rationale of breakage6 that is the real foundation of the work I scored only blankface. She just liked the picture and this once again reminded me of the inevitable failing of the breakage approach fashioned in the TAS; where the idea of the work, its meaning, is only discernible when taking in the whole; the written and the aesthetic together, something which requires careful exhibiting. Each element on its own merit cannot hold up...perhaps? But a good oil is a good oil nevertheless - I found a magic one in the loppis recently of pines trees in the snow from 1945. Astrid Wallenberg her name was.

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1. John cares for his elderly parents who moved to Norrtelje in 2017.

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2. Cezanne in response to Ambroise Vollard's enquiry regards his whereabouts during the Franco Prussian war: "Listen, monsieur Vollard, I worked a lot out of doors at L'Estaque. Except for that there was no other event of importance in my life during the years 1870-71. I divided my time between the field and the studio." John uses the French phrase 'sur le motif' meaning out of doors, in front of the motif/subject.

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3 Refers to Yates Mackee's book Strike Art. Mackee declares that Occupy movement signalled the end of socially engaged art.

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4 A strand of political and social theory which has become increasingly influential (in left and right circles) over the past decade in relation to questions about the future of capitalism.

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5. A contemporary military strategy articulated by General Valery Gerassimov which advocates the creation of chaos and unrest in an enemy above direct confrontation. See Molly K. Mckew in Politico:

"The approach is guerrilla, and waged on all fronts with a range of actors and tools—for example, hackers, media, businessmen, leaks and, yes, fake news, as well as conventional and asymmetric military means. Thanks to the internet and social media, the kinds of operations Soviet psy-ops teams once could only fantasize about—upending the domestic affairs of nations with information alone—are now plausible. The Gerasimov Doctrine builds a framework for these new tools, and declares that non-military tactics are not auxiliary to the use of force but the preferred way to win. That they are, in fact, the actual war. Chaos is the strategy the Kremlin pursues: Gerasimov specifies that the objective is to achieve an environment of permanent unrest and conflict within an enemy state."

 

6. See John's Torpoint Art Service residency.

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