Nothings beats the children but you know this is pretty much all we have as far as work goes, this Dignity Scholarship. Our old world identity as a critical contemporary artist, (even if it was mostly a smokescreen) is a gonna, sacrificed for our breakage and cemented by the move to Sweden where there isn't any contemporary critical art much. Our remaining identity, our dubious claim of being painter is rapidly disappearing, indeed we are fading like Macfly in the reproduction1 and all has boiled down to a flat line routine; we take the children to school, we take our mother shopping or to the doctor or just keep her company, we drive around and visit this place and that (like Mr Phillips),2 we have no friends, colleagues or acquaintances nor do we expect any in the future, we have no job or career, we barley speak the Svenska, we barely see anyone, there are, in short, nobody's hooks in us as old Cezanne said, and all our remaining energies are funnelled into painting and our Dignity Scholarship work...its perfect! Work, real work is a pleasure but one must sacrifice a certain amount of dignity, respect and social and mental well being in order to just get the chance at the real stuff, at least that is how it has boiled over for me and of course we are not Machiavellian3 enough to have reached this position by design and indeed it cannot go on but we make what hay we can.
So from this strange and distant outpost we watch and listen to the politics from our old land and that of the related USA, and offer you an account not based on any certainty or analysis and certainly not expertise but our feeling and instinct and most importantly we try to mix it into our own research base of critical, anitcapitalistart of the old world and of course our Doing. But the question for now is this; will the global outrage at the murder of George Floyd be sustained through the coming alt right media twisting campaign? (I am thinking mainly of the USA where the way that plays out may well decide the election.) Or will there be the familiar plot of the ”normal working people” - the ”silent majority”, pitched against the cathedral bred ”snowflakes” and ”radical left thugs”? I for one dare hope that the one time 'bums rush'4 of the left will become instead the rush of the braves, fighting with such energy and passion that finally the new tricks and guilty cunning of the alt right imaginary be overwhelmed and they are knocked out. Well with that knee on the neck of poor George Floyd the bell was rung and the fight is on, a rematch you could say after the shock victory of Trump and the alt right in 2016 despite the rise of so many new social movements, Black Lives Matter and #METOO to name a couple.
I am itching to get back to the oils for a summer campaign of green, green and more green! Broken tones, wide open spaces and deeply colored skys await us and we are aiming for a haul of no less than 15 size thirties by the time of the harvest. Then progress will be assured. I've had enough of this stuttering!
The lockdown is being eased in the UK but in a storm of confusion as usual. The scientists say no, the Eton Trump says yes etc...
David Icke is keeping on despite his ejection from The You Tube Video Service and look here, whether he wants it or not his researches certainly dovetail with the alt right imaginary. Now he screams about the one percent funding Black Live Matter. I wouldn't be surprised. It would not be surprising. I'd be more surprised if old Icke wasn't funded by the IRA! In any case if half the one percent fund social justice and the other half funds the alt right then there is no contest but all that is unimportant, we must look to the content and go from there. He can go on about covid and about the illuminati and the sailsbury intrigues5 but when he is focussing on undermining a social justice movement then he reveals more of himself. But why pay any attention to the likes of Icke anyway some will say, well to that I respond that this isn't some conference where reputations hinge upon accuracy and reference and besides he is a weather forecast.
Could you get any canvas for me?
You know we watched the full footage of the George Floyd murder only today and I can report that it is every bit as sickening and disturbing as everyone says. In addition we took in a different angle which focused on the police officer who is standing guard over his colleague who is murdering George and who refuses to react as people are begging them to take the knee off the mans neck as he repeatedly says ”I can’t breath”. It is horrible! Initially we avoided the video partly because it is our habit to avoid everything especially the news and events and partly because of the disturbing content but having taken in a very powerful discussion on the subject presented by the talking host Oprah Winfrey I felt I had to face it.
I found this program quite by chance you know and while we were pursuing our daily chores of all things. You see when tackling the house I often set a program going on the television to break and structure the monotony. Usually I aim for the inexplicably stimulating programs of the discovery channel which often feature the progress of some character or other as they plough on with their daily work. Programs about crab fishermen, gold miners, car mechanics, moonshiners, truck drivers, train drivers, antique dealers, homesteaders and survivalists are all available but I noticed something else, a discussion on the topic of George Floyd, civil rights and where the movement must lead. It featured a panel of black activists, academics, writers and politicians and a particularly powerful vicar who brought a thump to the heart and a moist to the eye, speaking the politics like no politician I have ever seen. The show was conducted as a video conference chaired by Oprah, the discussion and the interspersed footage from the protest was powerful. It was just what we needed to shake us as we sit dwelling in our DS shelter; a bang on the roof shall we say. I am the first to admit that we need a slap in the ideas once in a while and mores to the point this is important for our DS work, our merging with the USA election, and quite possibly for the entire future of social justice and anti capitalist struggle. Indeed it was the way the discussion of antiracist activism dovetailed with anticapitalism in many of the speakers responses that surprised me somewhat. Indeed the reverend William Barber who is an anti poverty activist and founder of something called the Poor People Campaign that really connected with us when the panelists responded to Oprah's 'what is to be done' concluding question. The other responses were very fine and contained a mixture of ideas that were far reaching and pushed the limits of the possible such as full compensation to black people for slavery and others were artistic regarding the need to build narratives around the perpetrators of the unlawful police killings of black males to prevent these stories being hidden and a politician who really seemed to be in the game who prioritized the filling out of the census by black people and generally breathed life into the potential of the existing democratic system to make progress emphasizing the need to vote not just for the president but all the time on local issues and state elections. But it was the reverend who for me was a revelation. Lets have him running for president! He speaks on poverty and straight away the lines of division begin to crumble. He talks of 140 million Americans living in poverty, from all ethical peoples. He very quickly cuts through the alt right hatred like one has perhaps always assumed should be easy to do but somehow does not happen and like the religious man he is he does it in a way that offers a hand to Trump's base and that is key. He brings the killing of George Floyd and the crisis of racist America into the fight against poverty, the fight against capitalism., and he concluded with words that were as moving as they were rousing and that I will perhaps never forget. I for one will be tuning in on June 2020 to a movement that feels like it contains Real political possibilty.
Our blossom study was taken in the Bergby garden prior to our watching of the Oprah and our discovery of the Reverend Barber. It shall probably be our last of the year, taking our tally to a modest two 30's, two 25's, and a scattering of 12's. In todays study, a square 15, a figure stands with hands in pockets, bored, resigned or lost under the blossom. The petals rain down. Safe but stuck. Thoughtful but inactive. Mask on and waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. The figure suggests this quite accidently, we merely wanted the hands in the pockets and to reference the pause of the pandemic but through this written account and our plugging in to the antiracist protests, leading to the chance discovery of the Reverend Barber and his anti poverty campaign, this post will perhaps prove to be pivotal for us and our thinking through these post truth times. June 2020, the Poor Peoples Campaign, the refocus on the capitalist system and corporate greed, the erasing of the left and right binary to imagine people together once more. This is what we have been waiting for and it is just in time it seems to me, for us and everyone.
1 Back to the Future. Macfly fades from a reproduction as his trip to meet himself in the past goes sideways.
2 John Lanchester noval about a man who loses his job but continues wit his regular routine nonetheless.
3 Elaborately manipulative
4 Attack of an unskilled fighter.
5 Possibly refers to that poisoning.