A week has passed by since our last effort during which we have made the most of the weather and warm evenings. We have swam twice a day with a great deal of recharging of the batteries in between, but while we have layed off the painting we have prepared a good deal of canvas frames ahead of the autumn campaign. We can already begin to see a colour shift in the trees which makes them more pronounced and individual, reminding one of their differences after a summer where all is similar green.
The harvest has not hit us in Bergby yet but is on the way so if we intend to grab any more of the crop then they must be done without delay, maybe tomorrow. Of course we had our ideas and desire for a summer campaign of wide open field studies and of course it has not materialised but so be it, we managed three large canvases which will last, but it is beginning to get predictable; an endless raft of measures1 to ensure this or that campaign which inevitably fails to materialise and yet we perform our optimism afresh with each changing season. Now we have the autumn upon us and naturally we shall tell you that we will mount our attack on the colours, that we shall progress, that we weave our humble, plodding studies into the events of the world and indeed we shall, just at a frustratingly below potential pace.
Aside from the nature studies it is in the realm of the symbolic still life that we can most directly tackle the themes of the day and while I am itching to get to work on a series of bible studies in reference to the Poor Peoples Campaign2 I simply must get this one of an old engine in the books first, and besides I have not yet sourced a hefty bible.
This old engine has been on the list of subjects for a few years, since the SAS days actually but has always been trumped by the field work. Now is the time however since it came to symbolise, for me at least, something of the changing world of tech and the dangers and distractions therein with the additional imaginary of the pandemic stoking the pot. This strangely pathetic, darlik3 like industrial propulsion device fits the bill somehow.
We perhaps have been moved to finally act on this one due to our week of garden time which has given us the chance to really look at it, but also because of the violet thistles which have emerged at its base. We took it in one and at a low angle, from the floor in fact. The view shows the heavy metal piece firmly ensconced in the earth and the various grass and flower that have grown up around it. The space recedes back to the line of lilac bushes at the top of the composition.
Someone else has been shot by the police in america and the touch paper has been lit again. It really is now about Donald, the American dream bollocks versus the 'radical left thugs', that's the story on the telly at least and make no mistake it has been designed to be so by Trumpers. And on and on we could go about the dilemma of social protest, but we had our fill in the previous post. We can add something to our imaginary boxing analogy however but its all for nought really. It comes from the champion gypsy pugilist Tyson Fury and his own aim in competition to always do the opposite of what the opponent wants; "if he wants to box ill fight him, if he wants to fight ill box him..." Not a bad philosophy on the face of it but once again all this is too abstract, the real situation is just that - 'real'; in feeling, in passion and as such is unmanageable. The Trump base of activists however must be far more manageable. Why? Because they actually support that dolt and will likely do what they are told. Do the protesters really support Biden? No, it perhaps is a case of knowing the better devil, but it is a funny thing that it seems when a politics becomes visible these days it somehow seems to play badly in the media. Just the other day I caught a clip of some anti immigration protesters in the UK fighting with police at a beach where some desperate people had washed up and in those few seconds the spell of the alt far right politics, at the root of this protest, was broken. Why? Because we saw. We saw faces, clothes, gestures, aggression which is the sort of thing that the alt far right have so sneakily kept hidden throughout their ascent to the mainstream. And that is what moderate waverers in the US see in BLM is it not? What they see is not them and they cannot identify with it and that is more powerful it seems than anything, even murder. But let us not get bogged down. Lets just say that the Trump\protesters binary is surely bad news for the Democrats.
I had a wonderful time on this study today particularly when my daughter joined me at the easel; she stood and watched then ran off for a bit of board and began a still life next to me on the grass and we worked away, sharing the palette for about an hour. I was very proud of her and you know during that time the media scale has never seemed so far away and irrelevant. It is not that I forgot what I was thinking its more like it was muffled, it didn't matter anymore.
So how does this old boat engine relate to our themes? Why are we projecting, onto this dignified old boat engine out to pasture in the garden, our dim kaleidoscopic thoughts and worries about the naughty tech companies? It must be due to that Burrows text4 we ate in the northern woods. You see why I hesitate to read too much, its because I read only enough to get panicked and not enough to gain the calming effect of knowledge. We worry about the automation, we worry about the algorithms, we worry about the data science, about the facial rec, about the virtual bamboo curtain, about the five gees, about the space Reich and about the institution smashing that needs to occur to make it whole. And with our dim torch, low on batteries, we shine a light on some familiar characters; Tiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, the Google brothers. We shine at the alt right a unique internet movement which offers a convenient politics to pursue the world smashing required for the tech fellas to fully transform the power they do have into a new world made by and for their techno Utopian vision. One thing we might say here is that such a vision most likely will not resemble the ethno-nationalist states that is the fantasy of the white supremacist and the fear of the left. No, one hopes that once the world has been flattened the new world will probably be positive and fun and inclusive at least superficially, a new bubble, just completely controlled by the tech fellas. And so saying it would not be a surprise if the alt far right and every non radical follower who has drifted into that space, feel the sting of betrayal when the new world emerges and is not at all what they imagined. But here's a good question; who or what needs sacrificed on the alter of the new techno Utopian gov corps world to make it happen? That has been on my mind since taking in that wonderful documentary about The Clash5 and seeing all the old footage of early Thatchers Britain and the battle with the unions. Looking back to the emergence of Thatcher/Reagan neoliberalism it was precisely 'the unions' that were the obstacle which once destroyed allowed the changes to roll in, so who or what plays the role of the unions today as the next new phase of capitalism emerges? There is no actual opposition or threat to capitalism is there? But perhaps there is still a little too much regulation? Too many rights? Too many obstacles in the way of the progress of technology and humanity as seen by the tech fellas (I notice Musk is wiring up pigs now in readiness of the sentient AI takeover)6. There is a culture of democracy however imperfect and farcically corrupt it has always been, that nevertheless prevents the richest most powerful people in the world behaving like the Egyptian farohs and Roman emperors of old. Being able to weild absolute power. So if that is true what force is it that holds such a thing in place? The only word for it or rather the word that seems to be in play is 'the cathedral'. Yes indeed, Curtis Yarvin what have you done, blogging away in the silicon ditch for all those years - you should be wired up to Elon's pig!
You know I watched a debate or rather a discussion between Graeber and Tiel called Where Did the Future Go, in which a key theme was the idea of a power shift from wall street to silicon valley but tell me, is that a goer, is there any truth in that, are they rival industries in some way? Maybes eye and maybes no, but for me the background change that seems most plausible was that shift to oligarchical capitalism that Burrows and M refereed to. The shift in attitude among the elite to an embrace of chaos and uncertainty rather than their previous wish to maintain security and confidence, but if that is true does it not seem to open the door for change? Of course at present this new oligarchical era has been accompanied by a far right anti democratic rise but if that were to change and the chaos begin to turn to calm democracy, would the rich elite still operate at arms length? And if not would they be able to just step back in and start ordering everyone around once more? More abstractions and without any accompanying paintings this is just hotmind, and my appetite for it is dwindling.
A Handshake,
John
1 A phrase which means a lot of something.
2 John expressed his support for PPC in Work 27.
3 Killer robots featured in Dr Who, an English sci-fi sitcom.
4 Killer Clowns, Techno Fogies, and Architectures of Exit: Urbit and Neoreactionary Imaginaries, see Work 31.
5 See Work 32.
6 Elon Musk has inserted a coin-sized computer chip into a pigs brain to demonstrate his plans to create a working brain-to-machine interface.