Work 40
In this communique I endeavour to describe what happened first and foremost and this as a mental test as much as a desire to articulate - no side doors, no distractions, no metaphors no analogies. I ask your forgiveness in advance if my prose betrays a hint of the plain.
The work depicts the same patch of field as Work 39. In fact this patch is the area of mid ground in Work 39. It shows one of my favourite subjects, the stiff hay straws left after the field has been harvested. I like how the green grass can be seen protruding up between the straws. This is a little larger than Work 39, a little squarer and it is hardboard support.
I painted from a standing position to get a better angle to show the criss crossing chaos left by the tractor which is the subject. I like to imagine it as a cityscape actually.
I painted in salvos of thick impasto, the strokes layed on according to a basic vertical (for the stalks) and horizontal (the ground) principle with some angles for transition. The rich dullness of the work is in fact quite accurate, these harvested fields seem to hold their own colour underneath.
When I finished I packed away my equipment and walked home. There we are! A description without recourse to any
monkey mind referencing. But it was not so easy, I was desperate to describe the criss cross chaos of the scene to the famous junction in Shibuya1 Tokyo and if I was not keeping a strong eye on myself I would have shoe horned in an analogy to our post truth state which has left us all darting this way and that, like when you wack, with a log, the myran stack.2 But no, you see, I did it and there's nothing wrong with a bit of simple.
Old Burrows.3 I have been in touch with him in a bid to gather some intelligence on the alt right. My motive is to two fold, firstly because I am interested in the subject and feel it is a key feature of our present state and our changed capitalism and therefore crucial to our five themes. Secondly to show you that if given another season I have something raw and definite to go on. To my reckoning it would be wise to glean some sense of the periphery, the blur or better yet (to borrow a word I just learned from the world of graphics) the 'bleed' between hard core racists, whom one suspects cannot believe their luck, regular far right bastards and the newly converted who have been persuaded perhaps by the anti political elite message of the alt right and the disinformation and hate mongering around immigration. The sort who may say "crikey, you can't even have a conversation about immigration these days without being called a racist". It is at such moments I believe that many good people turn bad right and having baited the hook and set the trap the populist right can reel'em in with ease while the answer of the left lacks the populist touch and at a time when the culture of expertise lies trampled under foot, all the whys and wherefores in the world fall on def ears, even when it does sound as cool weaponized immigration.4 Its as if the Gerasimov doctrine has helped create a fog, we may say a post truth haze, in which people are vulnerable and susceptible and groping around they see a lantern held by which ever alt right populist you care to mention and are beckoned:"It's okay, come on, come over here, look it's all right we understand."
These days we can all feel like Lucy in Narnia5 faced by that White Whitch6 Farrage; his sleigh so warm, his Turkish delight so delicious, his pint so cold.7 A great many people as it turns out are Edmunds8 and of course this is all psychological warfare we speak of. Well anyway, old Burrows came up trumps with a reading list9 on the most significant alt right research on offer god bless him. He is in mind to pen a book about it and has been gathering the reading for years and I do hope he gets it out but unfortunately, due to time constraints he most likely never will. Good news for us however and with another season I could sink my teeth in and investigate this murky world in relation to our Dignity Scholarship Doing. Not a pleasant task but, like the time I crossed a bog when lost in the Veda10 forest, sometimes one is forced to wade through the mud to reach the other side. In that spirit I will also endeavour to read Eatwell and Goodwins National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy which apparently "does good job of demolishing lazy stereotypes about Trump and Brexit supporters" according at least to some bugger at the Sunday Telegraph. Well that is all fine by me so long as we remember that stereotypes come from somewhere and when that place is as dark as the roots of the alt right then...well just fucking remember that! And why not a book that challenges the lazy stereotypes among Trump and Brexit supporters about liberally minded folk?
Peeping into the sourcepan11 we see that the alt right British Prime minister aka the Eton Trump aka Boris Johnson continues according to his new playbook. I imagine him sitting up in bed reading said playbook and giggling to himself: "Can it really be this easy"? The game it seems is to provoke maximum outrage among the enemy and at the moment when all and sundry believe that 'he's gone too far' and will surely concede, then that is the time to ramp it up (the rhetoric) and 'double down' (the message). Then, in refusing to show shame or acknowledge the moral authority of the outraged, well, nothing happens, everything moves on and the sphere of what is acceptable is expanded a little further (like the story of avant-garde art.)12 Their new world eats the old one and gets fatter!
Yes yes, these displays of outright defiance are as strategic as a pincer movement. Never never show any weakness or any respect to the values (liberal) and world view of ones critics. Imagine if the Eton Trump did back down on, for example, his use of inflammatory language, then that clip is instantly multiplied and extended and shared to the point that it becomes a 'true' or at least will do the rounds across opposition networks. Why would he give that gift? Instead we have shows of defiance, of no surrender and that clip instead is shared among sympathisers. Borg technology now seems to be leading the dance worse luck, and look here, the algorithm gives even less of a shit about people than the Tories.
Of course you see this best with Trump but it is a broader technique I fancy and not the creation of the populist right politicians even though they put it into practice so well. No, this game of outrage and defiance is a reflection on how politics works in the age of The Borg media and the way that what appears on and through these channels constitutes what is happening - "reality", and everyone has their own these days and crucially, as we have learned through the Cambridge scandal,13 a very real kind of political reality is actually up for sale! Thanks to social media technology "reality" is a commodity like any other that can and has been purchased.
Well, to come back down to earth I can tell you that while I was going through my Torpoint Art Service papers I rediscovered a little introduction that we wrote for the project which I thought could have been used on the website. It is a strange idea really, a bit like a hypnotists monologue about some spirit falling from space and floating down to Torpoint, landing on the Olympic where I am stretching a canvas on the aft deck. The spirit watches then enters my body through the nostrils and sits behind my eyes! Well, as I said a strange idea the meaning of which I am not at all sure of but it didn't take long to convert this monologue to the Dignity Scholarship14 so I'll send it over and maybe we could use it somehow, if we go for a publication and if you grant an additional season.
I will head off to the new wood in a day or two to collect that tree stump disaster metaphor. It really is a peach and should tie the season off nicely.
Yours, in anticipation
John
1 Known as the busiest intersection in the world.
2 Ant hill.
3 Refers to Professor Roger Burrows who John most likely knew from Newcastle University.
4 Also known a the weaponisation of refugees. A political and military strategy in which the aim is to create mass migration of people fleeing to the borders of the enemy in order to place pressure on administrative structures, resources. This is thought to have happened in Syria in 2016 when Syrian and Russian bombing caused the mass movement of refugees who flocked to Europe causing a crisis which was capitalised on and maximised by the far right. Thought by many to have heavily influenced the Brexit referendum.
5 Character in C.S Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia novels. Narnia is the secret fantasy world accessed via a wardrobe in Lucy's uncles house.
6 Evil character whom Lucy first encounters after entering Narnia.
7 In the Lion the Which and the Wardrobe the White Whitch has a warm sleigh and Turkish delight which she tries to tempt Lucy with. Lucy refuses. Nigel Farrage is famous for appearing in public with a pint of beer.
8 Edmond, Lucy's younger brother, is second through the wardrobe and next to encounter the White Whitch. Edmund accepts the Turkish delight.
9 The Burrows list:
Ambedkar, M. 2017 ‘The Aesthetics of the Alt-Right’, Post-Office Arts Journal, 11 February, http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/.
Beckett, A. 2017 ‘Accelerationism: How a Fringe Philosophy Predicted the Future We Live in’, 11 May,
Blincoe, N. 2017 ‘Nick Land: Alt-Writer’, Prospect Magazine, 18 May, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/nick-land-the-alt-writer.
Cohen, N. (2017, December 27). The Libertarian Logic of Peter Thiel. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/the-libertarian-logic-of-peter-thiel/
Duesterberg, J. 2017 ‘Final Fantasy: Neoreactionary Politics and the Liberal Imagination’, The Point Magazine, https://thepointmag.com/2017/politics/final-fantasy-neoreactionary-politics-liberal-imagination.
Gilroy, P., 2019. Agonistic Belonging: The Banality of Good, the “Alt Right” and the Need for Sympathy. Open Cultural Studies, 3(1), pp.1-14.
Goldhill, O. 2017 ‘The Neo-Fascist Philosophy that Underpins both the Alt-Right and Silicon Valley Technophiles’, Quartz, 18 June, https://qz.com/1007144/the-neo-fascist-philosophy-that-underpins-both-the-alt-right-and-silicon-valley-technophiles/.
Gray, R. 2017 ‘Behind the Internet's Anti-Democracy Movement’, The Atlantic, 10 Feb, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/.
***Haider, S. 2017 ‘The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel: Artificial Intelligence and Neoreaction’, Viewpoint Magazine, 28 March,
Hui, Y. (2017). On the Unhappy Consciousness of Neoreactionaries - Journal #81 April 2017 - e-flux. Retrieved November 2, 2018, from e-flux website: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/81/125815/on-the-unhappy-consciousness-of-neoreactionaries/
Laliberte, B. (2014, January 5). A Comprehensive Introduction to Cathedralism, Part 1 | Anarcho Papist. Retrieved June 11, 2019,
Land, N. (2012) The Dark Enlightenment http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/thedark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/.
Land, N. 2017 ‘A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism’ Jacobite, 25 May, https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/.
Lecher, C. (2017, February 21). Alt-right darling Mencius Moldbug wanted to destroy democracy. Now he wants to sell you web services. Retrieved October 31, 2018, from The Verge website: https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14671978/alt-right-mencius-moldbug-urbit-curtis-yarvin-tlon
MacDougald, P. 2015 ‘The Darkness Before the Right’, The Awl, 28 Sept, https://www.theawl.com/2015/09/the-darkness-before-the-right/.
MacDougald, P. 2016 ‘Accelerationism, Left and Right’, 14 May, https://pmacdougald.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/accelerationism-left-and-right/.
Monbiot, G. (2019) ‘From Trump to Johnson, nationalists are on the rise – backed by billionaire oligarchs’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/26/trump-johnson-nationalists-billionaire-oligarchs
Nagle, A. (2017). Kill all Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Winchester: Zero Books.
Reynolds, S. 2009 ‘Renegade Academia: The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit’, http://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/renegade-academia-cybernetic-culture.html.
Sandifer, E. (2017). Neoreaction: A Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt Right. Eruditorum Press.
10 Area near Bergby.
11 The 'stew appears to be a metaphor for Brexit and the broader socio-political context.
12 A criticism of avant garde art is often that it merely expands the frame of art and the possible forms art can take. See also TAS Work 19, note 10.
13 Analytica
14 Our journey begins in outer space. We are floating down towards planet earth. Space is dark but filled with light.
All is silent save our breath. The blue and white of earth becomes larger and larger. It fills our vision now. We slip into the earths atmosphere.
Down we float, blinded by the sun and spinning round and round. We open our eyes and are dazzled by brilliant light. Slowly our eyes adjust.
The sky is blue. All darkness has vanished. Below us are hundreds of white shapes. They are clouds. We fall gently into a cloud.
All is white yellow and grey. Our eyes are open but we cannot see. Gently spinning we fall out of the cloud. Below us we see the surface of the planet.
The land is green and punctured with blue, black holes. They are lakes. Down we fall. We begin to see grey and white patches. They are our cities.
Shiny shapes sparkle. Buildings now, and cars and roads. We can see people now. Gently down we float towards the ground.
We can see the tops of trees and the green of the fields. Red houses are dotted all about. The ocean is close by. We are close now. We finally touch down.
Feet on the ground. We are in a garden. To the side is a yellow house. In front of us is an old red barn. We enter the barn. It is cool and dark.
We see a figure sitting in a comfy chair. He is an artist, a painter. The walls are covered with paintings of trees and fields. On the table next to the comfy chair lie tubes of paint of every colour. The floor is a mess of oily rags and old drawings. There is a sound. We look up to see the artist hammering a nail into a wooden frame. He is making a new canvas. He cannot see us but he knows we are there. He wants us to follow him.
He wants to show us something. We watch the artist finish his canvas. He stands up and walks with the canvas across the barn. He secures it to his easel and slings it over his shoulder. He picks up a bag of paints and walks out of the barn. We follow him. We enter his body through the nostrils and make our way up to his eyes. We gently seep backwards and settle into his mind. We can see what he sees. We can hear what he thinks. We come to a stop. The first part of our journey has finished. Now we shall travel with the artist as he embarks on a journey of his own. Into a world of hidden danger both real and imagined. We will see where he goes. We will see what he does.