Yesterday evening was beautiful! A golden sunshine fell on the yard the likes of which I cannot recall experiencing in the time before but by the close I had suffered a fresh reverse which saw my worldy possessions scattered throughout the fish hold damp. Until the grim discoverey my mood was content as I marveled once more at the sight of the pontoon village at high water, bathed in light of the deepest saturated yellow ochre. Indeed it produced an effect so extreme that on seeing a reproduction one would be forgiven for assuming a liberal application of the photoshop curve1. Perhaps we can think of it as akin to the sulpher effect that Van Gogh refers to as the light in the south. In any case it was a fine evening to walk and socialise and thus I took to the pontoons. 

I exchanged with the other residentials here and there, mainly about houseboat maintenance, it was a regular promenade, everyone out, and it emphasised once again the great pleasure I feel to be living in a community just a step away from the world and where the question of how best to live becomes a social one also. On returning from my walk however, I went down to the fish hold to collect my art theory books which were in storage along with another 12 or 15 boxes, all our possesions, and to my horror I found that all was damp. I had wanted to prepare and experiment with arrangments for the Three Crisis still life but in the end there was no time as on discovering the damp in the first box there was nothing for it but to pull out all boxes away from the hull and unpack the contents. I currently sit in the centre of this mess writing this entry and everything is indeed sodden. I'd be tempted to use this opportunity to carry out a Michael Landyesque purge2 of all material possessions and be done with it, throw it all over the aft deck as a high tide recedes and it would would be food for the fishes at Wembury Rock3 in a couple of hours, but who can do that in real? No, I shall need to take another walk tomorrow to seek more  advice on how to better tackle the moisture. Needless to say the books you see in the painting are wet through, possibly rendering them unreadable, we'll see. If I lay them out to dry in the wheelhouse they may be rescued yet. I need some more wood from Totem.4

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Now, to the picture and you know I have had this picture in mind for so long that when I finally sat down to get it, it came out easily and it seems to be quite clear that a certain amount of planning even if it is just imagining allows one to work quickly with less need to pause the flow of the process to make compositional choices and adjustments. Perhaps the composition helped also as it is rather well balanced. We have three bottles, each with a candle burned down to the rim, and four stacks of art theory books set on a table and green background that suggests a corner. We are of course referencing Van Goghs many symbolic still lifes in this endeavor such as Still Life with Bible, from 1885, and Still Life with French Novels and a Rose, the latter we have based our arrangement somewhat. 

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Walthur5 and others have it that Van Gogh introduced the phenomonen of individual symbolism in his still lives and that this became a fundamental feature of modernism. I gather that this means that to grasp the meaning of the symbolism on offer one must understand the details of the artist life and personal circumstance, a job seen to with great gusto by an army of van Gogh scholars all over the world. This as oppossed to the more universal religious symbolism built up over the centuries. Our symbolism in this painting is both individual and objective, if one can call it that, but our individual symbolism is slightly different as we are providing the code to crack the meaning through our own institutional framing as the Torpoint Art Service and these very words. This is a point worth making as although artist myths still proliferate today individual symbolism has long ago been bypassed as an effective strategy in the creation of meaning due to the prevailing toxic perception that it sits somewhere between irrelevance and masturbation with complicity with the market thrown in!6 Indeed individual authorship in its entirety is counted out for many especially those still suffering symptoms of relational aesthetics and the great saga of participation7.

It is fair to say these authorship debates have now been trumped by events such as occupy, but in any case there have always been other ways to understand individuality in art. For example, since the time of Buddy Bolden8, (a contemporary of Van Gogh you know,) jazz musicians have always asserted individuality and personal narrative not because of an ego driven mission to achieve personal success like that 'Belle Ami'9, but as part of a positive assertion of cultural identity. George Lewis said it well; listen: "the development of the improviser in improvised music is regarded as encompassing not only the formation of individual musical personality but the harmonization of one's musical personality with social environments, both actual and possible."10 Well, well, well, 'the harmonization of one's musical personality with social environments, both actual and possible.'  An apter idea  I'm yet to hear. Apply this idea to political art and I would gladly march under the banner.

So let us think like that and with such musical ideas to inspire I feel no shame in our use of pictorial symbolism here but it must be understood in relation to our wider mission and what better subject for a still life to symbolically evoke our rationale of breakage than the three great crisis of capitalism? Naturally the revelers will bellow "only three crisis"? But the picture refers specifically to the very popular seminar and article by Brian Holmes11 in which he asserts that the crisis we live through today represent a major shift. The third great crisis of capitalism: the 30's, the 70's and now, the old 'right left right'. Bang! Wop!! ...Powwww!!! What a farce  our recent history!

But löök here, it is not hard to recognise that it is indeed a great crisis, everyone says it, but I like the way old Holmes places the dangerous farce of the present into context over the past century of capitalist expansion. This I feel is crucial because it underlines the fact that capitalist greed indeed needs and feeds off crisis and like this it will happen again and again. Holmes makes it plain that our critique must now take into account this dynamic. We know what to expect and the stakes can hardly be higher as Graeber and others have noted we are dealing with a kamikazee system 12 willing to send it all to hell rather than change. Kind of heroic in a stupid stupid way, have you seen the scene in The Other Guys13 where the two macho police hero jump to their deaths from the roof of a sky scraper, a fitting analogy to the financial crisis indeed.

But once again to the picture, I have been faithful to the appearance of the books and I am in no doubt that I have caught enough of their character for anyone researching critical art over the past few years will be familiar. Starting on the left we have the Data Browser series14 which actually come out of Plymouth University just a 5 minute rib ride from the yard. Then  at the front we have Society of the spectacle15 on top of Artificial Hells16 on top of  The One and the Many17 by the worthy Kester. The yellow volume is Dark Matter18 by young Sholette on top of the New Spirit of Capitalism19 and old Holmes at base with Escape the Overcode20. The final stack has Ranciere's The Politics of Aesthetics21 a top of the ever green Kafka and The Trial22 then Goncharov's Oblomov23 (both always appropriate in my view) and finally a collection of texts on the topic of art and everyday life24. The bottles each represent a crisis, the spent candles extinguished testify to the the worlds that never were and the human potential laid to waste.

Many of the art theory books were formed among what young Sholette and the good Stimpson called the 'intellectual shanty towns25' that starburst all over the globe in the latter stages of the old world neoliberal fenzy and in the lead up to the third crisis. Now, with crisis set inn and the world changed, it seems to me that these art theory books have been put out to stud somewhat on the grounds of the stately home that is the art world, which seems to thrive in the crisis by the way. Indeed it seems the two best bets for investment in austerity is the luxury and the discount markets. You makes you money, you takes your choice! But what meaning do we intend to symbolize in this juxtaposition of bottles  and books?

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Well, the intention is to create a feeling of ‘what next'? What next for critical art, what next for the left, what next for the world. We need not ask what next for the right: they will capitalise and we can indeed expect a forth crisis but through our efforts as the Torpoint Art Service are we not providing our humble answer to the question of what next? For us the books and the lessons therein regarding critical art in the pre crisis neoliberal context have been learnt then burnt so to speak. And we begin again. Now by all means pile into the pursuit of collective autonomy if you have the wherewithal and the mates or direct action if you have the time, the opportunity, the energy, the will, the skill. But remember many, including myself, have not these tools to transform their natural resistance, if we may call it that, into activist energy. An alternative or rather in addition to direct activism however is the transformation or the steering of whatever it is that one already does into a revolutionary direction to expand the radical imagination that way. That sourceball Bishop said that art is the ability to think contradiction26 well here's one: I say that now is the time to reignite the revolutionary imagination but with feet planted firmly on the ground in this world, in ones own environment. And having just written this it occurs that perhaps this a way to interpret old Holmes'  enigmatic rallying cry to 'live the model'? Re-do all the doing and set it against and beyond27 capital and bring this with us when we again rise up together on down the road. And somewhat contrary to what I said before28 I feel that part of this new approach to the revolutionary imagination must be an ambition of sustainability, it must be as tough and serious as your life29. We must realize that we are the model and the model lives! 

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Good god now we’re into it, but It is time to stop as I must clear up this mess and set my damp to right. In addition the diesel fumes from the engine room are making me feel unusual.​ While the books are out I will paint another like this in a day or two as there is much to be put in order down here and it is my daughters birthday tomorrow.

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With a handshake,

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John

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