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You know us by now. You know we keep the news media at arm's length, choosing to navigate by the stars despite having the garmin plotter1 to hand you might say. You know we have been following events via the bite sized hints of news we find via the pages of the sky sports.2 You know we do it to control our attention, and also to avoid being manipulated. But you will ask if there is dignity in it? Could we simply be a head in the sand job?3 A 'bottle job' as young Neville might say?4 We contest. Who else has faced the chaos of the PT era more squarely than us? We are just doing it in a different key and look here, there are plenty of you contemporary art jobsworths5 about carrying on as if it's still 2009! Recently however the trickle of info to be found in the sport pages has dried out and the need for us to orientate and to dangle back down into the realities on those cloudy starless nights has been creeping up and so yesterday we were forced to have a deeks at the news pages for an hour or so.
We joined the action as Russian forces were pulling out of Kiev leaving behind evidence of War crimes. Many bodies we saw, hog tied and executed plus the total destruction of cities. It turns out little Vladz has chosen "denazification" as excuse for the invasion although it seems the man pulling the strings for this type of nonsense is the PR man Surkov. He takes the dark arts of spin to nutty beng levels and no mistake. He is happy to kill to create the necessary message, and equally happy to kill, kill and kill again on the basis of his PR efforts. We learned so much from a welldone investigation program by a man by the name of Gatehouse who knows the thick and thin of the Russian way as much as all the other talking heads put together for our money. He convinces us of the key role that Surkov plays over there in that game bred oligarchy mad house. He convinces us that Surkov is a key architect of the social disruption element of the PT era to the extent that we should add him to our montage. We have Gerasimov in Putin's pocket representing the greyzone warfare strategy but perhaps we would now put this Surkov in there with him as the great master of reality twisting but we cannot change it now.
The reason for the potential invasion was not ever stated as far as we know beyond talk of Nato encroaching which makes sense in theory but now we have this phantom "denazification", a word that contains motive and justification and this just so to eat at the brain and distract. Why that big lie? We might do well to reread 17 Kremlin Disinformation Techniques You Need to Know on the Byline Times to understand, or is it just a thoughtless excuse, a less thought out throw away line perhaps? Like when Frank Underwood and assistant are trying to come up with just the right sound bite to smear a union protest.6 They bat around a few ideas but nothing appeals until Claire breezes past with the drinks and casually offers her two cents worth: "Disorgsanized labour"? That's it! The action cuts to a politician hammering the line the next day in an interview. Is that how denazification emerged? Or perhaps it is the opposite, a data calculation mangled through Surkovs evil genius noggin, in any case the line is out, the bear has barked and all the far alt righters shall take it to the Borg and chip away at it in manipulative tone and no doubt "denazification" will merge with the Qanon lies become the infirm basis of Don Donald's election bid in 24, either during the campaign or as hostile takeover after.
Enough.
The picture today shows the rickety pontoon at Lomarbadet. In general we steer clear of this sort of view as it seems like the fare available from Ikea (a rabbit just bounced past) but we took it on today on account to the twisted walkway and frozen paddle. A metaphoric feast with no place to land! We have an iced over lake, we have twisted peer, made to twist to the right over the long hard winter, we have a paddle on the ice and one under, we have a boat rendered useless until the thaw. One could piece that lot together any which way but what we had in mind, what made us take it on, was something about the two paddles and an attitude to the changing world. As time has passed one world has receded into memory while the changed world we now have is here and must be dealt with. Do we pick up the paddle and face the future best we can or do we wait and stagnate meditating on the old world and hoping for a thaw that may never come? We think of the post truth era, the addictive tech, the greyzone war, the reality moshpit, the climate crisis, the hell bent march to the singularity - we don't like all that very much but here it is - which paddle do we choose? The answer I hope after all these seasons should be obvious to you; we must pick up the gauntlet and run with it. The gauntlet is to exist and thrive in a world where certainty has vanished or at least has slid from a perceived collective societal imaginary all the way to the Nrx land of nutty beng where we now live. By choosing to grasp the paddle available to us we do not say that the future of painting lies in the metaverse or some such but we say ok so we cannot know anything about the decisions of those in power or of the flight of the Borg so we must make our own framing. That we have been doing all along for art kicks, now it's for real.
High five,
John
1. Refers to a GPS map used to navigate the sea. Garmin is a manufacturer of marine products.
2. British sports broadcaster.
3. A way of avoiding the 'truth'. Derived from the ostrich.
4. Relates to cowardice. To have 'bottle' means to have courage, to have 'bottled it' means to have lacked courage in a situation. The phrase 'he's a bottle job' is a variant relating to the subjects general character. Young Neville may refer to sky sports commentator Gary Neville.
5. British slang meaning a person who follows the rules at the expense of common sense.
6. Referring to the political intrigue big drama show House of Cards.