Look here, I make no apologies for barging your institutional self aside in this fashion;1 is it not a sign of the times for the lunatic to take over the asylum? Nor do I apologise for this introduction, nor for the rejecting of the themes, nor for the 52 verse proposal we have replaced them with. After two seasons battling your 'questions' we find the world quite changed and whatever was meant by the 'post truth era' it has simply become the way things are, the prevailing orthodoxy almost, so we must move on.
That said you will find our poem a net cast wide, catching all manner of bit and bob as we trawl slowly along, and that is the idea, to create a varied orbit around our Doing this time rather than those rather dry academic themes. We must be in a position to encourage synchronicity, to welcome it into our thinking and use it to our advantage. What other choice is there if we wish to make some hay from this barmy overcode we live through?
Following the defeat of Don Donald last season we assessed the landscape and saw that there were an awful lot of gauntlets scattered about. We browsed around and eventually have taken up the one marked 'AI Singularity'. We have put it in our Dignity Scholarship wagon and have hitched ourselves to the future. More than that we cannot say, perhaps the less said here the better; is this not the place of the institutional mission statement?
Dane Bowers, 2021
DS3 Narrative Banner, 2021
What we do know however is that our hay remains the study of nature in paint and that in dialogue with our various orbiting satellites set out in 'Dane Bowers'. The rock at the centre of our orbit is simply our bid to address the future and we intend to do this not only with our painting and correspondence but also a little more directly in video fashion, just as we did in The Wretched Painter series.
In any case it seems like the old games gone and the new one is framed only by the tech based activities and the primacy of the virtual sphere which increasingly bleeds out and wreaks havoc in the worlds of mind and mortar. It is in this changed landscape that we sneak unnoticed, easel in hand, from the cubby hole to the time machine and our addressing of the future realm, but it is all left to be said via the work. What do we know anyway? We have merely placed the Doing ball on the tee of the first hole of the 2021 course and are currently settling our feet, adjusting the grip and are addressing it with the wood!
1. For the 2021 season the Bergby based painter John Maclean returns to continue his work from Season 1 and Season 2. As this is John's final season he has been given free reign to frame his investigation as he choses and as requested we have agreed to dispence with the 5 research themes in favour of a more extensive proposal poem from John which will act as guide and inspiration as the residency progresses.