The question of the public has been creeping up as it tends to do every now and then as was evident in the previous work. We would like it to be true; that new and savvy political middle ground opening up and pushing back the insanity but sadly we rather think that this is one hope that wont graduate. We continue the theme today with a still life featuring Bridle's New Dark Age and a sprawling, threatening aloe plant. It made sense at the time - thinking about data fed, computational, culture war, tribal public's and possible remedies. Look here, ever since our reverse at The Carbeile Inn some ten years ago1 we have wrestled with the question of what public, what audience, what group of people we imagine we are addressing in our work and processes. This is a very political question of course and the fact that it has come to addressing the AI Singularity demonstrates our pessimism and struggle, but the question remains hot. That said, in our Borg dialogue such as it is we still retain a togetherness in the sense that while we address the Borg it is our intention that this is in turn to be taken in relation to the wider sense of common plight in that we all face and are dealing with the effects of the tech, the data industry, AI, of automation. So saying, we still harbor a sentiment for imaginary togetherness within our Doing but we must concede that such a thing is inherently naive (that's why its imaginary) but today perhaps seems delusional. Is this imaginary collectivity something that we should continue to strive for in the work?
Morning by the way, we rather have jumped in there and forgotten ourselves. We have set down the brush and are keen to get this out.
Through our illuminating 'chat'2 with a friend in the UK however we discovered just how difficult imagining togetherness has become and this due to a staunchness of opinion running so tribaly deep that ones position on events can now form identities which one lives it seems. We have heard it said that politics today is more about identity than anything else like class but we have never experienced what that might be like to live with, until our little communique gave us that disturbing flavour. She talked of the effects of the pandemic, of family rifts, of marriage break ups all due to rows over 'the government narrative'!? Her children dragged in, genetic experiments, people being stabbed with vaccines, no vax organic farms, truth newspapers and spike proteins. It all reminded me somehow of your flickering gifs.3 She later sent me follow up information in the form of links to some of the 'independent researchers' she likes to watch discussing the fake pandemic, signing off the message with a jolly, "hope you enjoy it"!
It appears she lives her opinions and she lives well, but look here, considering the reality of filter bubble media consumption, have we not all somehow become researchers of socio-political reality? And this out of necessity? Just as one builds and supports ones research hypothesis when at study by picking and choosing references to suit, so to does the engaged follower of the culture wars and associated post COVID, horse shoe mutations. In both cases we end up with multiple, differing versions of reality and of what is happening. But this new research comes not from books and papers but from news, events, memes, trends, spats, scandals, whatever is happening in the psycho-social moshpit seen from the window of our filter bubbles. Peer reviewed it is not but authors of this new 'reality research' believe in their logic, methods and sources and know how it has evolved in lived time and in relation to events. It seems. We are at it too. Each new twist in the plot of the pandemic, of the culture wars, of the alt far right take over, the nrx, Trump drama, scientific breakthrough, AI innovation, climate disaster, is fed into our personal research mangle and made to fit and make sense and then we feel rather up to date and orientated. The facts of the matter rarely impinge on this process. It reminds me once again of my previous position of primary instituter at the Open Council where we consciously positioned our artistic selves adjacent to events and were seeking every opportunity to respond to the 'impulses of the contemporary city environment', as bold as that sounds, and we did so in order to create a way of having endless streams of subject to create and improvise with and furthermore that this would automatically have relevance and meaning as it has stemmed from daily experience.4 This established our own reality lens one might say, to which we attached the anticapitalist filter, but how we have seen such lived research projects go the other way. Indeed in these post truth times, with the societal imaginary in tatters, we are forced into living a research like existence to have some necessary sense of the world and what is happening and our place in it and our conclusions form which identity we fit into. It seems. Then a populist leader can assess the board of identities and with the help of Borg tech attempt to engineer power but that is quite enough, we have no need to rack our reclusive off Borg noggin any longer about such post truth circulars. This is an honest still life of an extraordinary looking plant and an equally extraordinary book.
A handshake,
John
1. John was verbally abused while painting in at the Carbiele Inn in Torpoint and subsequently read in this incident the changing times. See Torpoint Art Service, Work 44.
2. See Work 41, Self Portrait.
3. See Dignity Scholarship Season 3 Crypto Odyssey. Refers to the texts John has been sending which we have to transferred into GIF file animations. See also Work 14, paragraph 4.
4. See the Open Council Report: Story of an Improvisation Machine, Methodology.