The Eton Trump has got it and now does his Churchill impression from self isolation.1 It is apparently worse than first thought. More and more younger and healthy people are dying. Donald has stopped making light and the scientists seem to be stepping in. There is the national lock down in the UK. There is a hint of spirit of the blitz, the stiff upper lip.2 But one wonders how long before people start to crack.
It seems like it's all over now, the world as we knew it that is. Or at least the world has been paused; capitalism has been paused and may never be the same again! This is not too strong for my money and maybe there could be some silver lining and indeed even the briefest peep at the UK news sites revealed many a makeup free talking head saying as much. Supposedly the environment is already showing signs of recovery at least according to the swirling graphic I was fed and the chorus of praise for the NHS and the care sector is deafening.
After all the years of austerity the government are paying people to stay at home to self isolate. Surely, when it's over in a few months, they will not all just simply go back to work happy days. The austerity narrative has been smashed, even if the bastards want it to continue, this pandemic has seen to it that it wont be so simple any more. Yes indeed the political narratives of the future are sure to be being created right now between the sneezes, and there will be an almighty scrap I would imagine to steer the new political imaginary born out of the pandemic. But what does all that matter?
On the work front I have a still life on the boil of the old school desk from last season, done in patchy fashion and in the barn. It is a rather low perspective with the desk pushed up close to the wall. There is a book about to slip off the sloping table top and a hammer on a desk behind the seat - make of that what you will.
Look here, does it not seem that the pandemic crisis suggests a natural movement left, (hence all the conspiracy theories) although as I mentioned before,3 there are some boons for the right minded also, but there is a third possibility. Is it not the accelerationist story that comes out on top? Not left not right but those who wish for the speedy overcoming of capitalism and the world as we know it? Accelerationism! Without the booknotion (still)4 regards the accelerationist field and the coming automation we can only talk in fictions, or rather peddle and adapt fragments of the story line that we have gleaned from reading the back covers of books we cant afford and the abstracts of papers we have not the time to read. All I know is that this thinking started with the cream shop fella from Leamington5 whose ideas and writings have apparently had an enormous influence on proceedings with regards to whoever wants to destroy the worlds democratic society. The alt right drink it in for the ultra nationalism and the 1% for the power to rule and act a bit more like Roman emperors or Egyptian kings. Yes indeed, Leamington Land, despite himself, is in the minds of white right from top to bottom. The alt right have the guns and ammunition, the billionaires have the data and algorithms! And the cast as far as I know is made up of the famous billionaire tech folk; its the Thiel's,6 the Big Z's,7 the Metal Musk's8 of this world. It's the book shop fella,9 the google brothers and one assumes a cabal of countless others all playing the game, all holding their golden tickets hoping to be on the first flight to Mars, (after countless minions have perished in testing, naturally.) But can they really steer the entire world and everyone in it to follow their path? Nobody could, could they? Well, ask this; who has the data? Who controls the most lucrative algorithms? Never mind winter, automation is coming, but enough of this kaleidoscopic monkey mind rambling, there is work to do. We must, however, look seriously into the topic of accelerationism and automation, at least how it relates and is discussed with relation to the arts. Art is our way in to any of this and it does indeed seem like the relevant topic along with 'art and the Anthropocene' among the theory minds in the academies but what of us and our humble pursuit?
Regards our Doing work, which we must remember is the backbone of our state and orientation, we continue on largely unaffected; painting away like there's no tomorrow. We have dipped our toe into something new however, namely the swirling broth of online video, but don't panic, we have not capitulated yet into the role of plein air painting guru and to be quite honest with our work so rough it would be a comedy compared to the commercially polished but hideously photographic and unimaginative plein air work of most on the online. As Van Gogh said of the little Danish lads work,10 it's all a little 'flabby'. And Cezanne, even back then, abhorred what he called the 'photographic eye' and that is exactly what these guru's peddle. They remind me of big cat keepers somehow. No, our dignity is in tact and in actual fact we may have stumbled onto a way to further our work simply by extending it into another scale, the scale of online video blogging. Now this may be pushing it a bit but for my money the scales of experience (as mentioned in theme 2) can also be linked to scales within ones work and practise. Scales of online, offline, of medium, of format and dissemination. Surely the scales within the work as well as the way the work references the wider 'scales of experience' you talk of are up for grabs. The work must travel! Even when it is a humble little oil. Anyway, as the isolation is kicking in I decided to make a video to send to my pre DS benefactor, the photographer Mr. David Green who resides in London. Aside from providing some light relief to his isolation we had the duel intention of sending a message of gratitude for the funding but also to offer a hint of explanation as to what happened to the money (several thousand pounds) and why my well thought out plans for commercial success failed so conclusively.11 So I pushed the button on my listening device and made a quick talkto from the studio in Bergby. Just a few minutes taping to show him around and introduce the idea of a message series. I opted for the moniker of The Wretched Painter for this job and did so firstly because I have used that term in bantering fashion over the years in our email exchanges, secondly because it is factually accurate I would say and thirdly because I feel that there may be some value in this term and state with regards our Doing. Maybe we can build on an idea of the 'wretched' as some sort of creative state that is base, humble, or honest somehow, or authentic (although that's all a bit risky) or at least non commercial (although we do try to sell) or perhaps it could refer to a consciously non contemporary but advanced state of practice. A wretched state of non contemporary contemporariness?
In any event I have just finished preparing the video on shotcut12 and have sent it to the people at Vimeo13 hosting service in New York where it is being uploaded.
As it happened somebody with my credentials had already opened an account and that person apparently was me, and to my surprise there were two poor old videos I had made of Occupy Plymouth on there, one a humorous animation of the 'wish list' and the other a rather haunting show from within the old jobcentre which was occupied and inhabited for a few weeks before it all come crashing down with an eviction bang. You know I was even in the room where a judge judged what to do about it all. It was pure farce in the end with one of the occupiers claiming that if there were not enough chairs to seat everybody then the hearing would be postponed and based on this I was rounded up and shanghaied into the magistrates office with about thirty others. It was indeed a squeeze, there were indeed not enough chairs and with hopes high the Occupy representative opened with the chair idea but was unfortunately waved away with no come back. With that it was a routine 'get out of the building now or else' case held in the surreal atmosphere of a room rammed shoulder to shoulder like a football terrace. We filed out and milled around then dispersed; it was all over but it was no defeat, rather it was the inevitable outcome. But it was a victory to have taken the process to that conclusion. Getting to that point involved a million moments of creative resistance, collective courage and world changing possibility! Occupy was an extraordinary time, a raging success and lets not forget it!
Enough.
John
PS
Believing the above to be true there were also regular bizarre, surreal and comedic moments throughout Occupy Plymouth, at least whenever I merged with it in my offsite capacity. Not so fun during the night for the ones in the tents, attacked as they were by squaddies and drunken night revellers, but I must permit myself the following brief account of the day that Occupy Plymouth gatecrashed the union marches against austerity. Pure Monty Python14 is the phrase to be sure as the Occupy group march through the town to acclaim unimaginable now, and arrived outside the council building where all the union members were mustering in preparation for the parade. A huge crowd of many unions and each one prepared with signs and banners ready for the off. Well, the Occupy supporters myself included approached the scene with the famous 'we are the 99%' cry, to yet more acclaim from the crowd and perhaps buoyed by this we were led to the front of the march where we downed banners and signs and waited for the off. (I had prepared a giant image of IDS's face in a sunflower which was part of the IDS Portrait Award, the last project I oversaw at the Open Council.) Well this provoked a volley of pelters15 from the union group behind us causing their leader to remonstrate with some kind of parade official that they had lost their place. A representative from Occupy was called in and a brief debate was had which ended in both party's returning to their groups with visibly contrasting emotions with the union man swearing, gesticulating and glaring the occupy man soaking up the cheers and applause; another victory - we were staying put! But that was not the end of the matter as once the parade commenced we soon realised that the group behind kept slowing down the rest of the parade of thousands, leaving the Occupy group so far out in front that it appeared to be a separate protest. We received a cry to slow down which we did but it happened again and throughout the march. All around the town we concertinered, the anti capitalists and the unions. A farce to be sure! Our cry of 'we are the 99%' interspersed with 'slow down' as the 98% were beginning to abandon us. We finished the march and headed back up Armada Way for the social at the Holiday Inn which was a good affair with cold beer, hot sausage rolls and rousing speeches, all forgiven and laughed about but the political differences could barely be contained. They wanted their jobs protected and we wanted the bankers on a spit. As the unofficial leader of the Occupy group said to me with derision: "they'll get their percentage point on their pensions and go home happy."
That was perhaps the beginning of the end...of everything.
1 Winston Churchill?
2 Stereotypical British character traits when facing difficult circumstances deriving from World War 2.
3 See Work 19 final paragraph.
4 John has been promising to read the Burrows list since Dignity Scholarship Season 1, Work 40 Cut Wheatfield, note 9.
5 In Dignity Scholarship, Season 1, Work 8, paragraph 7, John mentions that Nick Land lived above a cream shop.
6 Peter Theil
7 Mark Zuckerberg
8 Elon Musk
9 Possibly Jeff Bezos
10 Christian Mourier-Petersen
11 In Dignity Scholarship, Season 1, Work 1, John describes his failed commercial season as "a summer of dignity dissolving art related experiences".
12 Video editing software.
13 A place to exhibit videos.
14 A surreal and farcical situation. Derived from the brand of surreal humour of the Monty Python comedy collective.
15 Severe verbal abuse.