The snow is falling again worse luck. Peeping over the monitor we see the flakes settling on the newly unfurled leaves of the lilac bush. Our work has faltered as we have been awaiting the canvas from Geerstacker which had in fact arrived a week ago but has been held in Gimo and try as I might to persuade them the postal authorities are determined to keep it there rather than run it over to Hallstavik which would suit us of course. I have spent two emails on this equaling four days of time then once I conceded that I must collect myself I have been without a vehicle as ours is at the menders having been ravaged by mice over the winter, causing untold electrical damage we have just been informed. On the up side I managed to borrow a four wheeler from Helen's Father earlier and have just returned from Gimo with the Geerstacker duk. Having just unwrapped it and performed the tear test I have a good mind to send it straight back to Her Geerstaker with a coarse note. The stuff tore like a side of yellow pages1 but it will have to do.
Whilst negotiating the canvas debalce I have been keeping an increasingly baffled eye on the goings on in the crypto art market where cats, dogs, crypto punks and all manner of memes relating to the business man Elon Musk have been traded like hot dogs. Dellar's piece,2 which we banged on to the Borg about, failed to achieve its mark and in the end was purchased by 'Unnamed 0x3162...6896' for 2800 pounds at the current rate of Eth exchange, and Dellar had confidently pledged the first 10.000 pounds to an environmental charity! So a clue to the market there and no mistake. I would not be at all surprised if Dellar or those blowhards at The Art Newspaper bought the thing back, in fact part of the problem may be simply that the piece was out of step in its dampening sentiment which cast the whole crypto art business as the environment wrecker that it is. That is the logic of the socially engaged artist however, but the OpenSea is the absolute wild west of crypto art bubble hype blowing. Was not that 60 million dollar jpeg purchased by a crypto currency investor?3 No, Dellar's piece was a downer and 'critique' clearly not such a commodity in nifty wonderland even if purveyed by a turner prize winner. Perhaps he'd have more luck with it on Palm whenever that goes live. Having just had a quick look the site still shows a landing page of blurb and one wonders why the delay? It is beginning to seem like it may just be a nothing, a hype job, like the FYRE festival, but we'll see.
After the culmination of our birch tree work which has been occupying us for some five sessions now, we have needed to find some new ground and today we elected to explore the viking abbey area with the drawing platter. We have long had in mind this area due to the abundance of large and gnarled oak trees it houses which, owing to the land being a protected viking burial site, have been allowed to grow out as nature intends. In addition, the events of storm Alfrida4 are clear to see with dozens of trees and tree limbs laid to waste all around creating an increased sense of drama.
We managed a modest eight sheets but we made countless mental notes as we walked, framing up the scenes as we went. It seems the perfect place to work out the spring on patiently realized landscapes rather than our regular pursuit of the blossoms which has become bewitched by a commercial motive a million miles away from the ecstatic response to spring evident in the Van Goghs.
We parked on the far side of the grounds, deeper into the trees, and began to find some really promising views but we were ultimately sent packing by a passing farmer who objected to our parking on the side of the lane. A surprising display of pettiness perhaps but the good fellow has probably suffered in the past from people summering close by clogging up the tracks so we followed his sternly delivered advice to park the car at the correct spot at the entrance to the Viking Village. A reasonable request but unfortunately for us it makes the journey just to far to walk back over here with the meager time we have each day, but this disappointment evaporated as we discovered the other side to be far more picturesque.
We talked to the Borg while all this was unfolding, continuing in our basic quest to show it what we do. So you can watch it if you like. For my money our messages are progressing well but of course the humble viewer has nothing to go on, and there can be no hope that anyone will watch any of it anyway, but in that realisation we create a freedom to do as we please. I trust you approve of or at least tolerate this abandonment of an imagined public/audience on this our final season? What does it matter now? Look here, we lost the notion for the art public as far back as the Carbiele assault5 and since then the 'public' has become such a far right creature that we cannot so innocently imagine it as the happy receiver of art and ideas that we once did and I think it once was. So to do we struggle to imagine our place in the tribal culture wars which have seen left wing activism and critique blur with hoax and conspiracy. So we stick to our humble and lonely work, progressing as gentleman loser, scratching around with only our Doing, rendered psycho-nomadic by the prevalence of lunacy we have endured over the post truth era. Of course we abhor the hateful baiting employed by the alt right that we see all around, at least when we look, but at the same time we are wary of the tribal blindness that can result from engaging with it. (We need not really talk of the altright really, its just the way of things.) We want to imagine us together but the campaign to drive a data wedge between people has become so successful as to be actually forming identity so what's the use? So we skip to the end and pursue the best truly overarching framework to imagine togetherness that we can conceive; 'and from the fields and forests we'll talk to the Borg.'6 Look here, the aftermath of the post truth era we speak of, that "lunacy" of conspiracy theory led activism, is itself an example of the psychologically nomadic state in the sense that much of what we thought was true has been brought into question, what we thought held society together similarly so, and if one is young then there is no feeling of common sense moral authority to be found, even if only to give the illusion of calm to rest upon; "everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent".7 Yes, yes but even without thinking on the darker applications of the tech there is enough disorientation to go around anyway as everything, not just politics, gets automated and data driven. What we must realise is that this chaos has no reverse gear. Draw a line under the old world and stick a fork in it for good measure, its data time! After a decade of gathering, harvesting, mixing, stirring and with the addictiveness of the tech and the fifth G all around us, the architecture is in place and we shall now witness some amazing changes. Will we become nomadic orienteers, with no goal in sight? For those of us of a certain age who have experienced the transition from one world and imaginary that at least made some sense, to another that cares nothing for such luxury illusions quite possibly, but what of those grown into this way? Its a gas I'm sure but what of activism in this context, must all thought and action now take place within the data matrix? And what ways can critical thinking escape the shit zone8 and have any effect? What we were very comfortable calling anticapitalist activism just a while back seems to all too easily get blurred with self serving hoax and conspiracy thinking of the you tuber, at least from our distant outpost, and for as long as that is true we're under the thumb. But who 'we' is is anyone's guess now more than ever. What say you about the crypto odyssey?9
A handshake,
John
1 A pre internet book listing local businesses in alphabetical order. The yellow pages was printed on especially thin paper.
2 The Last Day, Jeremy Deller, 2021
3 The 5000 Days by Beeple was purchased by blockchain entrepreneur Vignesh Sundaresan for 69 million dollars.
4 Storm Alfrida caused considerable damage to the Norrtälje trees in 2019. See DS1 Work 5, 13 and 14
5 John was verbally abused by an 'austerity public' while painting in Cornwall. See Torpoint Art Service Work 24 Tree at the Carbiele
6 Verse 40 of John's proposal poem:
So no more yesterworld dark matter rant
It didn’t do fuck all and you can take that to the bank
Lets cut to the chase and praise the new Lord
And from the fields and forests we'll talk to the Borg
And from the fields and forests we'll talk to the Borg
7 Refers to a quote from Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. Often used to infer that chaos in society is useful to those in power.
8 Far alt right media pioneer Steve Bannon famously said "The Democrats don't matter, the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."
9 We informed John of our support.