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As promised a final tree stump study symbolic of disaster, crisis and bitter divide which I believe are three terms that are accurate if switched on to the psychological war we are living through. If not then I suppose one may ask what the big deal is, and good luck to those people but I suspect they will find out before long what the big deal 'was', particularly if you are a woman, not white and don't like the thought of a pigs anus in your hot dog (although admittedly that is more of a British concern).1
A glance at the heading of some info sheet2 in ICA yesterday tells me that the alt right SD are only marginally behind the Swedish Labour party, a poll which is as alarming as it is inevitable it seems, at least while the alt right parties are on the chase. Once they are in power then we will see, perhaps only then will a populist left emerge. Trump in America is the first alt right man in power and he has managed to stoke his supporters throughout and prime them for the 2020 fight which if young Evens is to believed has the potential to result in some form of civil war in the US, but we may not get that far. With impeachment proceedings underway the civil war may come sooner than we think but if I may permit myself a bold utterance, I believe that for the long run diffusion of the alt right it would be better to get the sad old bugger out by the count rather than the court.
For me the best hope of a populist left is that something grow from the environmental manifestations that have been thrown into the stew of late, but is it too much too ask for a populist left that might win back those who have drifted right? The extinction rebellion3 is so aesthetically political that it is hard to imagine for example an alt righter participating, even as their coastal home slides into the ocean.4 Look here, eco politics will not win back those who drifted right and if the environment has become such a political game in such divided times then it will not be possible to reach the essential targets5 and those are both problems. These problems were predictable I believe because 'the environment' is the trump card which can stop the alt right rise. The mainstream left parties cannot do it, outmemed and out done we might say, but they can stand with the scientists and build around them knowing that the science of the environmental movement dovetails with leftist politics. So I am cynical enough to stand in the puddle with Greta,6 placard in hand, fighting the alt right....opps I mean saving the planet. And if that doesn't work we all better start working on our goose steps7 and the environmental scientists will be first up against the wall.
What a pantomime of class hierarchy the environmental movement is! Remember that debauched specimen Faircloth,8 well he told me many amusing tales of his town, Machynlleth, which contains a large environmental research hub named The Centre for Alternative Technology which apparently attracts the best greenmind from around the world but it is, as he says, 'saturated with middle class hippy twats'! This centre sits next to a Welsh council estate where the people look on and take the piss; the whole scene seems to me ripe for an iannuccian9 parody, but look here, it seems clear even from my snippets of sky news that 'the environment' is set to become a star character of the psych war going in to 2020 and I would dearly love to engage with it and read all the fascinating booknotion that is no doubt accompanying its rise and also lets not forget the work of the alt right on this. Don Vladimir did his best to pour cold water on young Greta at the UN,10 because, I suspect, he sees the threat. To be sure what he said was not Trumpian, it was rather more measured and could have been said also by any number spoiler academics at any university, but what he says of the manipulation of Greta by unnamed forces is the interesting bit. What does he mean? Que David Icke and that excitable blowhard at Info Wars11: The Globalists!12
Well all that is for next season potentially or perhaps not, maybe just best to leave it.
Before recounting what was a splendid experience 'sur le motif' today I must just get something else out (forgive me but with this being our final work its now or never).13 It is a question that comes to mind regards our European struggle with the alt right, specifically regards religion and the role that it plays within the alt right ideology in Europe. In the USA alt righters are driven to far greater states of radicality, readiness and togetherness as a result of their deep religious foundation, but is that true in Europe? It is certainly not even on the radar in the UK and furthermore the church has recently criticised the Eton Trump. In the states the Trump base are persuaded not only by the standard populist alt right critique of political elites ignoring them and of their country being taken over by immigrants or whatever but are continuously buoyed by a religious zeal that sees them armed and ready for the rapture! And look here, is it not this blending of politics and religion that may tip this psychological shit show over and start spilling actual blood? To get answers we would really need to go through the Burrows list with a nice comb, or perhaps talk to some people. Is there a place left on the Borg where one could expect to have a frank talk with someone about all this, screen to screen so to speak, without the sound of buns boinking off the glass?14
Well happily for us we have the Dignity Scholarship as foil to this psych war, Psych War 1 lets call it, unless there has been a previous? No stop that. Now I must tell only of the walk in the wood and of the painting painted where a tree once stood and yes, let us again send out our prose with the arrow like directness, travelling straight to the heart of the matter.
To get to our new hiding place one must take the right turn after the road to Uddeboö, about four minutes drive from Norrtälje. You will find yourself on an unremarkable lane. Drive along this winding path for perhaps 300 seconds. The road pokes twenty meters into the forest and ends. There is just about room to turn around. There are five different footpaths to choose several of which are clearly used by horse and rider. Close by sit two large piles of broken roof tiles, one black the other orange, pushed up against the björk trees at the forest mouth.
With the scene set I digress. Have you heard the expression that one must fix the roof while the sun is shining? Well that was repeatedly barked by Toffee Dave15 across the box to Gordon Brown in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis and as you can imagine the sight of the broken tiles brought this to mind the metaphorical potential but also seemed to aptly symbolise our continual fall. We still must fix the roof but we've gone and smashed the tiles!
Well that picture is a definite must if we continue on for another season but today was for the stump. In fact I originally came across this stump, which is quite hidden, when on a rest walk between sketches of the tiles. It is situated only a few meters from where the car is parked but it is dense forest and could easily be missed, I spotted it however and found it to be just that little bit more special in its composition and surrounding than the ones I had earmarked at Lommarbadet. And of course the violent finishing off of the tree via axe wound was the icing on the cake and again suggests a sequence of crisis.
The support was again a re-used loppis offering, about a french 15 upon which I layed an ochre ground. The study was taken from the low perspective offered by my trusted folding stool which sank lower still under my weight. Beginning boldly, rather like the way one might attack a size 30, I sploshed and rubbed the stump in, ensuring that it really filled the frame. No sooner had I reached for the colour than it began to rain and despite my position underneath a solid pine I was not spared. This rainfall however had the effect of producing the most wonderfully earthy smells from the trees and the forest floor. An autumnal fragrance and no mistake, I began to feel giddy but that, I suspect, was due rather to my sunken stool and the ergonomically inadvisable position it now had me working in.
Getting up and re positioning I felt the need to get the blood flowing so I took a little walk in the rain. As I felt the moisture, listened to the quiet and inhaled the perfume I began to feel deeply content. You know it makes me feel a little guilty that for so many of the most memorable moments of true contentment and happiness that I have experienced in my life I have been alone. But that is the way of it; we all must deal firstly with ourselves.
The rain was not stopping and it brought with it a very dark sky which now seemed to be lowering. So having barely put in the sketch it seemed I had reached the familiar point at which one must decide to stick or twist and feeling the content and knowing this was the final work of the season I thought it best to go out in a blaze of painting so I skipped back to my little camp and went to work like a shoemaker.
One hour later I had the study in hand and was hastily packing away. You know it is a funny thing, I could (and did) paint on through the most heavy of downpours without noticing the rain much, so absorbing is the work, but once finished I feel every drop and can think of nothing but the drivers seat and the engine heat. Having warmed up there occurred a brief panic when it seemed I was stuck in the mud (now I know why the tiles had been broken). I put my foot on the gas and was able to free myself and we accidentally wheel spinned out of the forest with great acceleration, it must have looked rather queer to anyone watching from across the field (it feels like they were). On arrival back at my parents quarters I carefully leaned the sodden study against the linen basket for a look but it was hard to make out due to the reflections, so I went for a coffee and a game of pairs with may father, using Van Gogh picture cards I might add, and on the next look, with the water evaporated I was pleasantly surprised. Not quite jewel-like but it does I believe contain an extra punch. Good.
How I struggled with the rusty wingnuts of my easel, you know they have needed changing since the Torpoint Art Service could you send any?16
So the autumn is upon us and my Dignity Scholarship is over. We have managed 41 paintings and a great deal of correspondence most of which I feel has been rather unfocused and regretfully I have not been able to put much flesh on the bone of your five themed skeleton. At least in this our final work of the season let us say a little something on each theme and hope for more next season? You have been good enough to reassure us that the task of thinking on these themes was always an open ended assignment and subject to time, state of mind and desire but even you must have wished for a little more focus. After all we had plenty of time to drift around the issues did we not. In any case, for what its worth we'll say a few words if only to point the way for next season. Will there be another season?17
1. Instituting and valorizing the term "Doing" to describe open ended, non specific activities which are emancipatory in spirit.
Well lets be honest our contribution in this regard has been limited to merely using the word 'Doing' instead of 'art' and spelling it with a capital 'D'. Perhaps that is good enough?
2. Creating consciousness of the 'scales of experience' which press upon us in everyday life. How do the local, national, global, virtual, media and social media scales impinge upon your life and your Doing?
This one didn't get a mention and to be entirely honest it slipped my mind which is regrettable since the concept of scales of experience is exactly the type of idea that I was driving at in likening social media to the star trek borg.18 To insist on naming and defining the scales is to insist on their separation from other parts of life and that to me is a key part of resisting and staying sane especially regards the social media scale. I would perhaps recommend an 'off media scale'.
3. Develop the idea of 'productive sheltering' as a slow and methodical approach to critical art. What new ways can this work be made public?
Well I don't know about productive sheltering (unless cowering under a fat pine to paint in the rain counts) but has our progress over the year not shown a slow and methodical approach? In terms of making this public I suppose I would have to know if you meant the work or the sheltering? I presume you mean the latter19 and I would say simply that the format of the book is in fact the best way to present this work as it is I believe in our correspondence that we actually articulate the ideas, the paintings would not be shown off to their best however. A carefully prepared exhibition would obviously be better in order to take in the paintings but then the text would suffer so its six and two threes but I can say that the print on demand service certainly is a new way that one could make work public without needing to count on the support of some tiresome publishing house.
4. How has the imagined art public/audience changed in the post truth era?
To answer your question one would need to be clear what the preceding era was and also when the post truth era began. Have we moved past this period? The way I divvie it up is based on our TAS rational of breakage which takes 2011 as a golden spike to mark the break from one type of capitalism to another, neoliberal enterprise culture to austerity and with this change comes also a change in the story, the fiction of capitalism, of what we are being asked to believe. Of course it did not quite happen overnight but like the golden spike of the Anthropocene, one must lay a marker somewhere and 2011 is when the austerity policies took hold and the resistance increased and many other things happened. ( You could point readers here to TAS Work 8 I believe for our rationale.)20 So that is our marker but one cannot say the 'post truth era began at that point even though its likely Don Vladimir was already had his minions fiddling the Borg. I would say then that what we refer to as the post truth era revolves around the BREXIT referendum and the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath when the scale of disinformation was made plain and when, like it or not, the new way to Do politics was revealed. I suppose then that the years 2012 - 2015, in our little schedule at least, are the bleed between worlds. ( Did 'post truth' not win the prize for best word in 2017?)21
But the delineation of the post truth era describes much more than disinformation, it is also about the transformation of the way that political debate and debate of any sort is conducted and the use and influence of the Borg in politics and electioneering. It is not possible to overstate how profoundly public discourse has been transformed in the post truth era and one need not read the papers to know it, it can be felt. Imagine a discussion or argument in which another's perspective is nothing but a foil against which one asserts ones desired version of reality. Dialectics is truly out the window and opinions are simply what the holder wants them to be and if instituted vigorously enough, can remain as valid as any other. So needless to say this changes everything regards the public/audience for art due first and foremost to their being no single public spear22 to imagine and the last few years has taken us well beyond ideas of multiple publics and counter publics and look here, we now have it proven to devastating effect that the discourse of the 'publicness' excitedly played out in the art academies as emancipatory strategy is just as good, if not better, for the gander!23 Of course it is impossible to imagine this state of affairs existing without social media technology and as whats his name aptly described in the Cambridge reveal, due to the way AI algorithms work to show us our content tailored, based on our browsing history etc, we all essentially experience our own version of the media, of reality, we are each a public!
Well weren't we always? In any case it is clearly an online phenomenon we speak of that has steered HMS Public Discourse, off course and towards the rocks. Ohhh yes, it is communication on social media, on chat rooms, you tube, our searches, and crucially, comments sections underneath some topical content that makes the cake (not to mention the 'chans').24 To an extent, perhaps in the early days of social media, one could dismiss a lot of this as digital handbags,25 but look here, that was before its influence increased and the online ways of relating and debating seeped into the real. Not necessarily face to face real, no one wants to make a scene after all, but I mean the comprehension by steak holding power butchers that through the manipulation of the online media scale one can influence all the others. In other words the online realm becomes a battleground where politics is fought and bought. So here we are with something to offer regards the your scales theme after all. What were the scales anyway? It comes from Guttari but I read about it via old Holmes who I believe did the translation. His scales start from the 'tactile' to the 'intimate' to the 'local', to the 'national' to the 'continental' and then the 'global'. Was that not it? Well, lord only knows what Guttarri had in mind but I suspect our use of descriptive scales is a little more practical.
A note on our terms also. You keep saying "in the post truth era". I have some doubts about the term. I suppose we have not passed through the post truth era and the patterns and practices of said era are likely to increase in effect through 2020 and we can say we are aware that 'post truth' generally refers to the way politics is now played but I for one would like to find a new term to describe the era of capitalism we have entered. Although in saying that we are presuming that what we have called the post truth era is directly connected to changes in capitalism, but is that right? Is it the post truth state an instigator or rather a product of a renewed and changing capitalism? Well we cannot answer that with any vigour we must leave that to social theorists, where is old Holmes anyway, have you heard any whispers?26
5. To what extent are antagonistic critical artistic strategies productive in the post truth era?
Well with so much division in politics there is no shortage of antagonism and unfortunately it is directed at each other rather than the power mongers. Remember the apathy of yesteryear when critical artistic work would be to rouse and provoke, to peel back the curtain of capitalist spectacle to reveal the "truth". Or think of participatory practices which practically begged for public involvement. Now there is hugely increased participation and consciousness of politics and even if this is in the context of the strategic game of Trumpism, where riling people up, stoking anger and conflict is the strategy, we may hope that at some point the lessons learned and groups formed in this psyche war may be beneficial in a positive future.
While it is obviously important to oppose the racism, sexism, Trumpism of the alt right surely another round of meme wars is not the best critical strategy any more than outright antagonism would be and besides that will all happen naturally now as part of contemporary political behaviour. Look here, do we not know by now that when some far alt right knuckle brain sends out a shockingly sexist or racist meme, or when some authoritarian politicians spin doctor lets slip some story of 'pussy grabbing' adultery, it is done so to provoke a reaction that bolsters support? The trick is to articulate the shock and anger, because after all it is important to remain outraged, but to have a more cultured or nuanced response that is mindful of the games afoot. We must hope for strategies that build bridges, that mend relations but around what politicals could this happen? Anticapitalist? The environment? An appeal for calm? For sanity?
So to nutshell it for us we can say that antagonism is now the norm and if anything a state of apathy would perhaps be more of a threat to the current power butchers. So to answer the question, not very. But I think there is something old world about the way the question is framed, don't you? Does it not rather assume too readily the position of both the creator and the object of critique. Does it not refer back to the time when it was activist/artist versus financial capitalism? That was not long ago but is was a world away from now and now it is too late. Had I been clear headed enough to tackle the themes at an earlier date who knows what notion lotion we may have concocted to help us wipe the windscreen but if I was to offer something it is that we perhaps need to rethink our themes and rephrase the questions, if not for me then for the next participant. But I do want a second season.
So this is it and I must confess I feel a little low. Having questioned our entire self institutional method in Work 36 I feel again the need to defend our practice and our voices. People will say, Van Gogh theorised his practice yes, but he had a brother to which he really wrote his letters, in order to actually communicate with him. What is your motive? What game are you playing here? As if we give a damn about your trying to do! This is no time for games! Well to that I can only offer a melancholy riposte that in a time of change and when the ground under foot is shaking one must try something, anything and even if my meta-fiction is traditional and prone no doubt to induce the dreaded eye roll in those not willing to play the game, I stand by it on base grounds of personal expression, because it allows the floodgates of thought, memory and imagination to open, like when Nabokov commands to himself: "Speak Memory" - it allows one to loose ones mind and that is enough to be getting on with. Of course questions of quality, clarity and success are of secondary concern, what comes out is whats gone in, but look here, even if our efforts are as futile as Mcmurphy's doomed attempt to escape the asylum,27 let us still share his sentiment as he stands exhausted, and scanning the meek of his fellow inmates he says, "but I tried didn't I god damn it, at least I did that".
Until next season?
John X
1 We think this is a reference to BREXIT and the dangers of relaxed regulation in the food industry should a 'no deal' BREXIT occur.
2 Newspaper?
3 Global environmental movement
4 Increased incidents of landslides in the UK are said to be a result of climate change.
5 Probably a reference to the 'zero carbon' goal.
6 Thunberg
7 Military walk associated with World War II and the Nazi party.
8 The artist Ben Faircloth who lived in Norrtälje between 2016 - 2018. See also Work 14, note 3.
9 Refers to the satirist Armando Iannucci.
10 Vladimir Putin speech in which he criticised and dismissed Greta Thunberg as well well meaning but naive.
11 Alex Jones
12 Conspiricy theory regards the ambition to create a one world government.
13 John was in fact to submit one more entry.
14 Likely to refer to a 'bun fight' meaning argument.
15 Cameron, David. Conservative leader 2010 - 2015.
16 John requested new wingnuts in TAS Work 24. It would appear he did not receive them.
17 Decisions are made in October.
18 See Work 36, note 3.
19 Yes
20 TAS Work 8
21 It was in fact 2016. Oxford Dictionaries declared "post-truth" as its international word of the year for 2016 citing a 2,000% increase in usage compared to 2015.
22 Sphere.
23 We don't know what gander is.
24 Hateful image boards - 4 chan, 8 chan.
25 See Work 37, note 5.
26 We only know of 'Old Holmes' through John's correspondence.
27 Refers to Randle Patrick Mcmurphy in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. In the scene referenced Mcmurphy bravely attempts to rip out a drinking water fountain from its mount and escape the asylum by throwing it through the window.