We certainly didn't spare the tube on this one to be sure and if our coming work progress in a similar way we will need another order before long. This study shows a patch of meadow at top end of a long stretch of fields which every year is left to grow out, perhaps due to the boulders, to produce a rare and very welcome splash of blue in the otherwise rather limited pallete of the roslagen country side. Once again it is a subject that I have observed over several years but never had the courage to tackle due to either being committed to some other commercial subjects or perhaps not having the guts to take it on or even because in our early Swedish work, the days of SAS endearment,1 we still retained our old habit of only painting what is within walking distance of ones house. This remains how i would like to work today as over a long period one feels a far greater and more intimate orientation with the immidiate environment and the changes but with my little ones now schooling in Norrtälje and my continuing care of my mother, there is no time to knock about round Bergby.
You know that idea came from the TAS although they had a six mile radius within which all painting must occur, if memory serves, but in practice we went with what could be got at on foot. Why? Because that is what we knew and as we tramped around the yard and up to HMS Raleigh, after repeated encounter the subjects offered themselves, resulting in deeper felt representations that far trumped the superficial scenery grabbing one does when whizzing past. And is that not how all the old painters went about it, with the exception of the odd train ride they got what they got on foot.
Whizzing past is unfortunately exactly what we do now and indeed when we rocked up to the meadow yesterday evening it was our first proper look at the scene. Happily it proved to be an even more splendidly coloured and varouis meadow than could be gleaned from our daily rubber knecking and we attacked the hell out of it until it was done.
Incidently I am writing this post from Waynes2 in Uppsala where Helen and I took room and board for a night in the city as part of my birthday gift to her. We didn't stay in Waynes of course, we spent last night on ...gaten at the very pleasant but scantly functioning Scandic Norra. Our trip has invloved only respite and a mission to wander at our lesuire taking what we desired when we desired it, a simple strategy which enabled us to enjoy our limited time. We were positivly fleeced however by a set of blackgaurds at a vietnamese restaurante where we were, for want of a better word, 'hustled' by a charming frontman, his tales of vietnam and his upright piano which I happily tinkled. In short he passionately recommended only what was already cooked and stagnating round back, a fact that was confirmed when the food arrived double quick afterwhich we were russled swiftly out followed immediatley by the waiters, barman and chef who obviously wanted out toot suite. I heard the shutters coming down as we departed and indeed the food was worthy of a refund but no matter. We made up for this negative just now with a go at the scooters that one sees laying around the populated zones these days and that was very fine but to access these machines one requires the smart phone and seeing as I have stopped using them, due to the checking angsiety as much as the surveillance, I had to make to with a backie on Helen's. It would be a fine way to get around with the easle, pallette and heavy paint bag, thats for sure. How lucky for the plein airists of uppsalla.
I had planned to write back in Bergby but have arranged for this session due to a stack of thoughts which if not turned out shall collapse like the house of cards with us strewn beneath. Look here, we have been set off by an exchange with a beggar promting some post exchange looking in the mirror. I am still looking in the mirror. Perhaps I mentioned that I had designed and printed some stickers of the Poor Peoples Campaign, which as I have said I believe is on the right political track and more importantly has come at the right time and more importantly still it cuts straight through the alt right\radical left binary to put the focus squarely back onto capitalist system. Wanting to raise some awareness of the movement I chose the method of the sticker to disseminate as it seems that stickering is how people who want to say something publically go about it around here as far as I can tell and I joined the fray with a small black circle with 'Poor Peoples Campaign, USA' written in white. You know the world of stickering is rich and complex once you start to look. From my observations, in most cases the stickers work simply as bait to point the viewer to a site or search. They are often political, antifata and far right and a great many little startup companies, artistic mockstitutions, idrott affilliations3 and random prompts. My idea in simply stateing 'PPC USA' was to place it adjacent to any political offering left or right and to keep it politically ambiguoous to appear as potentially be supportive of both sides of the binary. The inclusion of 'USA' was designed to meld with the strange obsession with US hillbilly culture one finds over here. Anyway I found a few alt right provocations and few antifata retailliations and stuck my stickers accordingly, then I rounded a corner and suddenly I found myself face to face with a young girl begging for money whom I ignored definitivly. Well it didn´t take long for the contradiction to hit and that is why, some tem minutes hence, we have the lid open in Waynes.
The fact is I have walked around the city sticking anti poverty stickers everywhere which advertise a political movement in another country and when asked for help by a real person standing right in front of me, I just walk away, no help for her. There's something wrong with this picture, or at least a few questions to ask chief of which is this: are we too engaged in the abstractions of the post truth era political context to the point where we are divorced from our material reality? Yes and almost, but is that not a normal state to be in these days and is it not one that takes us back to our question of 'scales of experience' and of precisely being aware how the abstractions relate to the tactile or rather how ones online and media life effects how we actually behave in the real world.
Another question is simply why not give money to someone who asks? Well I dont know, we used to but then I was chased around a shop and badgered into buying nappies. So what? How nice of you to buy nappies one may say but look here I don't have money to be buying nappies for other people, also as time went on I gleaned the regularity and ordered nature of begging in Norrtälje. I know who will be outside of Lidl, Willys, Flygfyran, Coop, the ICA next to the library, system bolaget, and perhaps the apotek and they are there every day at the same time doing a shift. I happen to know where they live and all of this regularity, over time separated somewhat the sense of 'need' that usually translates into guilt that makes one reach for the mints.4 And while we have arrived at this potentially toxic of subjects let me say that in my experience there are no more than say ten beggars in the whole of Norrtälje so why not sort out something? Now, if we were involved in the online and instantaeneous dissemination of our words then talk like this is a bush fire; they dont want to work! They make plenty of money begging! Its organised crime! Now I know nothing of it other than I used to give some money and now I dont. It is entirely different in london for example where people who are begging are actually homeless and living on the very street. I assume the reason to not hand out mints there is just the sheer ubiquitousness of the homeless and the inevitable desensitising effect. Is not the official advice of homeless charities to refrain from the hand out and istead donate to the relevant local orgs?
No, this situation is a pandoras box which we have not the time to open completely so let us stop before we begin. Just this little peep under the lid is enough for us to understand that it is very complex set of issues which are well worth thinking through in context of our theme of scale knitting but to do so now, I am affraid, would take us too far away from the Doing, and is that not what needs to be done? Look here if you really want the subjects tackled why not offer a Dignity Scholarship to sociologists? Saying that I think I know why, is it not that this process is meant to offer a safe place for individual reflection upon the world and what one does first and foremost, as a pathway for greater personal orientation and mental wellbeing in this post truth era?5 These things rather than scholarship in its proper sense, at least I hope so as we have no business claiming accuracy or refference, or even organised thinking in our ideas, for us it is a more sporadic, flailing attempt at understanding a little of the changing world gleaned from those who have studied and thoroughly researched. But look here I have walked but a few steps in the shoes of the academic but it was enough to know a few things; first, the practice is to be respected for the thoroughness and richness of the thinking, and as such it is, secondly, a method of communication quite unsuitable for the speed, flux and low attention span of today, thirdly, it's commendable discipline makes it impossible to grasp for the unanitiated and fourthly, we cannot do it and do not want any part of it. But having said that it is how we glean a little knowledge that we can trust with regards to the world and the changing nature of capitalism. We have listened to the chatter and searched out that which is relevant to our theme but instead of bringing it into our thesis with a neat queote and bibliographic reference we have just gone on about it in our posts on the painting where it becomes part of our personal fiction, so we are right to speak of a personal bid for orientation rather than some well though out position.
Finally, before the lid gets slammed shut, it is important to say that ideas fished from the pool of academia is, to a great extent, deserving of ones trust and that is important. Of course the idea really is that you engage properly with the arguments made and you are either convinced or not but before that we know that certain measures to assure that what is published within is not total bullshit or inaccurate or outright disinformation. It is peer reviewed for a start which means that the refferences are accurate and the argument holds water to an extent at least and I want that scant assurance. It is not that I cannot make up my mind but I dont know about everything, I am trusting the writer not to trick me, we are imressionable creatures and can be convinced of anything so having a method of testing a text before it is released is a worthy stamp of approval. Otherwise it is easy, with a little book notion, to tell a convincing story about what ever you want without fear of being called out. Is that not how the conspiracy theorists work, or the alt right mouth pieces or that didactic tit Yarvin?6 It is naieve to imagine a neautral and dialectical process but review and particularly peer review is a mechanism that is worthwhile it seems to me, but not of course for those who scream 'cathedral'.7
No, let us stop. This sudden downloading of thoughts isnt going anywhere and Im not sure if this sort of confessional element regards beggers and the like is right and proper, I guess we just have to suck up this PPC/begger refusal clash and contradiction as par for the course8 in this line of work. Perhaps we can say that we have just experienced why the abstract and material/tactile political realities cannot be so easily thought together. Better to close the lid on it now and have a think and besides I have agreed to meet Helen by the Scooters in a few minutes. Let me just add lastly that we have picked up a bit of relevant reading, last night in fact, when we had a scan of an article penned by old Burrows and a collegue whose name has escaped. Never mind the 'Burrows list' we have Burrows himself! On first scan it looks to be of great interest with regards to the alt right movement and the powers that have supported it. Also in an unrelated bit of chatter we have chanced upon exactly the term that describes the kind of tricks and manipulation we were trying to get at in our barmy boxing metaphors: Gaslighting.
Back to the Doing with us,
John
PS
I didn't have any cash on me anyway.
1 Reference is to an untraceable residency project.
2 Cafe franchise.
3 John has used the Swedish word for sport.
4 The Swedish word for coins is 'mynt' which is pronounced in the same way as the English word 'mint'.
5 Yes exactly, personal orientation and mental wellbeing is it.
6 Curtis Yarvin. Influential alt right blogger known also as Moldbug. See DS 1, Work 31
7 See DS 1, Work 31
8 Par for the course is a golf analogy commonly used in the UK meaning that something is 'to be expected'.