Wratching around the återbruket I found this extraordinary old fashioned school desk and chair combination. On first seeing it I was rather taken aback as I have never seen the like, certainly not in England, such a distinctive object I feel sure I would have remembered. Such design, what character and it makes a great impression with its dainty structure; chair and desk both mounted together to create a single piece. From the desk top sprout four thin rusty rods of about eighty centimetres. After seventy five good straight ones1 the front two rods perform a wonderfully sychronized 90 degree turn to become the base rails to which the remaining two vertical desk rods attach. The chair has bolted to it a pair of slightly squared off horse shoe pipes set beneath the seat parallel with the edge of the chair where the kinder legs dangled - one pipe at front the other at rear. To the side of these pipes, two askew diamond pieces are bolted and the whole then welded to the base. The main part of the desk lid flips up providing space for ones endeavours while an upper panel also can be raised to reveal a thinner space for quills including also an inverse puk carved for ink. Such a charming piece of apparatus, one cannot help imagining it as some sort of exceedingly regal winter sledge and as I looked at it sitting there among the standard Ikea discards it was obvious that it needed rescuing. Like a dog.
Now, Helen keeps an outdoor desk piled high with rusty iron curios and I thought this would fit in with the aesthetic and certainly amuse her, so I scooped it up but because she is still collaborating in Newcastle I will not be able to introduce her to it for some five more cycles and so I merely left it by her desk. For the next couple of evenings, as I sat taking the late sun, I have been observing this educational relic and you know I have taken such a fancy to it that I may be forced to recind my as yet ungiven gift. The more I ran my eyes over its form the desire to draw it grew, and initially this was merely a technical challenge but after a few studies using my trusty platter the symbolic potential of the piece came to the fore.
Look here, before I go on I must straighten something out.
What I say of the pitfalls of the technological does not stem from the soured vine and it is not my intention to gloat downwards at the social media stramash2 from some lofty post of calm. No. I merely have the perspective of an outside observer, a position that some will say leaves me without a standing leg in the whole business but it also does provide a certain clarity and possibility to track the changes. and let me say I have only avoided participation in this digisocial farce quite by chance. You see when all and sundry were taking to the Facebook in the mid two thousands I was the primary instituter for the Open Council and my job was to institute and this I can tell you was quite a pressure. There was a constant need to keep up to date. Every day and everywhere one encountered potential subjects for instituting and it felt overwhelming and all consuming. The feeling of being behind or having missed out on what would have been a great post or on an event that should have been covered, a subject of relevance to tackle…well it was a real 24 hour project. Facebook, it seemed to me, was just like a giant framework for self instituting, and this in the even more literal sense than was the case with the Open Council - instituting your ‘self’, all the time, then merging this piece of work self with those of friends and relatives and countless hordes of unknown? Well that was the last thing I needed and quite before any judgement on whether Facebook was a good idea I sent it to fuck off land and that is where it has stayed for me. Quite a stroke of luck eh?
So over the years I have had the dubious pleasure of watching almost everyone I know entrap themselves in this data net, give themselves over to it and to an extent neglecting their real world and selves just as they build their online selves. All across the world people have been unwittingly donating themselves to the architecture which is now so disturbing, destructive and hold the globe in an authoritarian. Well, is it any wonder ones mind turns to science fiction analogies? For me what we have is the classic Borg.3 Social media is Borglike. It assimilates its users, merges them together in a giant network of control and surveillance and like the Borg it searches out new users and gets stronger with each new participant. This Borg is our future. AI algorithms are its generals and we are, in the most profound sense, mugging ourselves! "So what's new?" Some might say. With each shift in capitalism we create and recreate our own enslavement, it’s just never been so much fun! Increasingly however it now seems the fun is over, unless of course you are a billionaire fascist, then the fun is just beginning!
Back to the work and as I was saying, the symbolic, metaphorical, allegorical, obvious, potential of this old school desk began bubbling into the sort of multuplicity of associations, references and meanings that are the stuff of worthwhile pictorial symbolism; obvious yes but more also. So I went all in for an oil and a fair size one at that, just off a thirty, and I took it where it stood, on the grass. That location indeed accounts somewhat for the colours; an interchange of mauve soil and varied greens and as I painted I elected to play up this somewhat military coupling, (over egging it into the deeper recess using the Cezannian patch) to hint at the militarisation of education underway in the not so united kingdom. Ex soldiers, fresh from the battlefield, are encouraged to patriotically enlist as teachers to keep the children in line.
The whites are running low but as luck would have it Kate has offered a small job to edit a video of Bolivian interviews and I have requested payment in titanium.
Exercise: I have been swimming lately at Melby badplats, twice a day on most, and it really stiffens the rod. Did you know that blotter Mattisse took to canoeing the siene for exercise and ended up with a club medal for dedication?4
The unprimed roll has given me no end but I have found a way but back to the primed to be sure on the next lot.
My elders attended a dress reconstruction of the Russian army invading Norrtälje at the Rosalgen Museum...in another twenty years perhaps?? Have you seen the sign on the fence next to the Kommune building that says "A VOTE FOR SD IS A VOTE FOR RUSSIA" well that was me. Ha! It has been there for months and I believe it with all my fibre. What has changed however for me is that the Trumpist, accellerationist billinaires behind so much new fascism are right there with them, the Russians that is. There will be no cold war between the USSR and the new America!
Well, look here, one more thought on it then leave it out eh. We as a society have helped create the very Borg which will no doubt begin to turn against us in yet more mysterious and unknown ways. The answer? Regulation. The chances? Slime.5 (Did you know that big dosser Nick Clegg works for Facebook?) No, there will be no regulation. How, in any case could Facebook be regulated in any coordinated way across the globe? No, a culture of abstinence is the only way…JUST SAY NO, to borrow the old anti drugs slogan. Perhaps that’s not so far from the mark.
Anyway it is time to go now and to tell the truth I do not hold out much hope of many more paintings before the season is out and if this does turn out to be my final entry then I would like to make it plain, with all the dignity I can muster, that I would dearly like to continue this work for another season.6 I only hope that you can see some progress and can understand that my failure to address the five themes directly is due in part to my scattered thoughts about the whole question of critical art in the changing times we are living through and also because, quite simply, there is an awful lot to think on. I would like to imagine that this season has been one of sheltering but also of digestion and that the next shall hone in on something concrete.
Can I also add that if it were to suit you more I could discard my seven veils of authorship and simply write as myself without recourse to the faux traditional prose of the 19th century post impressionist? You see here I am now, just talking as me, John, sitting in the little ICA cafe next to the library in Norrtälje, just another blank face, drinking coffee and ramming hotdogs and bullars down the pie hole. I could do it as me for real and it would be much easier, it might not even be that different anyway seeing as my attempts at writing like the old Vincent basically amount to the odd 'look here', a bit of ranting, some Kinboteian scheming and some word mangling inspired by a combination of Nabokov and Brass Eye!
But stop it now.
Ask this: Is there any dignity to these authorship games anymore anyway? That is the question? Not just about the way of writing but of the whole self institutional ruse. Really, do you need it? I could just write a nice little blog to go along with the painting and not bother with the self institutional game. What is gained and lost? Is it worth it? Well I reckon this type of artistic self institution is still a good idea because it's great for the imagination, it develops the imaginary. And I like messing about like this. Ranting on, talking shite freely about anything I want, circling round everything, never landing (like a Chinese bird), all this for me is an act of defiance. A skill and practice that can defy and dignify until the very end. That is the idea partly or it could just be a midlife crisis, but there is pleasure in playing and of doing something that people might like or be entertained by and that is what I hope for; a couple of laughs and smigeon of subversion. The veils make a game of it, there's more to play with and that's true for someone reading it too I hope, the only problem is I'm not a writer any more than I am a painter (try as I might) so it might not work out but we all must do something to stay off the meds. And of course I can influence you down below...7
But no, I shall leave it how we are at present by god, until such time as I receive an express instruction from the DS on the matter, and look here, we may have one or two additional oils to throw in the pot before the season is done anyway, then perhaps in the break we can light a candle.
You know I would dearly love to sink my teeth into another study of the above, perhaps with more pulsating contrasts and less military scheming and then if possible an early harvest study. The field in Norrby looks set for the chop anytime now and I am as game as a brace of pheasants.
Yours as myself, on purpose,
John
1 Centimetres
2 A Scottish word meaning a mess or disturbance.
3 An alien race which assimilates all life into itself becoming stronger and more powerful.
4 This is true. The medal, from Nice’s Club Nautique, rewarded his assiduity, 154 outings in nine months.
5 Most likely a typing error. Should read 'slim'.
6 Decisions are made in October.
7 In the notes.