Thesis segment: Julian Stanczak

A twentieth century artist whom I have, in part, also considered in my research and how the individual might react within their process in relation to the compromised body, Julian Stanczak the Polish post-war Op-Artist, whose experiences around health and disability are often the initial focal point for any discussion or interview relating to him. For instance, in these extracts from an interview with art critic Brian Sherwin they outline the circumstances wherein he lost the use of his right (and dominant) arm and subsequently, through a process of necessary adjustment, continued his practice as a left-handed artist for the majority of his art career:

Sherwin:

“Mr. Stanczak, may we discuss your youth? Can you reflect on your past and explain how it shaped your future in art? At the beginning of World War II you were forced into a Siberian labour camp, where you permanently lost the use of your right arm (You happened to be right-handed.). In 1942, at the age of 13, you escaped Siberia to join the Polish army-in-exile in Persia. How did these early experiences of struggle and war influence your future work? Also, how did you make the transition of having lost the use of your right arm to painting with your left-hand?”

Stanczak:

“The transition from using my left hand as my right, main hand, was very difficult. My youthful experiences with the atrocities of the Second World War are with me, but I wanted to forget them and live a “normal” life and adapt into society more fully.”

Sherwin:

“Many people would stop working after losing the use of their main hand. I actually know a few artists who stopped working after enduring such a tragedy. They never got over it. Considering the experiences of your youth and the loss of the use of your right arm… all of the obstacles you had overcome… would you say that your work is about survival? Was that a key element to your growth as an artist?”

Stanczak:

“All human chosen preoccupations are about survival!” (Sherwin. 2007).

In another example of this focus, in the couple of quoted lines below, the interviewer highlights, once again, in her discussion with Stanczak, the affect of his illness:

Karabenick:

“Conditions were harsh in the camp. There you suffered from serious illnesses and terrible abuse, and the latter would result in the permanent loss of the use of your right arm.”

Stanczak:

“Yes, this loss ruled out the possibility of ever becoming a cellist.”

Karabenick:

“Your ability to draw at a young age was very impressive. You made the drawing below when you would have been only about 15 years old, having as yet received no instruction in art. Also remarkable is that, although you grew up right-handed, you drew this with your left hand, having by this time permanently lost the use of your right arm.” (Karabenick. 2012)

Whilst his reply to Karabenicks first statement may be brief, and almost frivolous, it is the combination of that along with his almost triumphant, or at least defiant, humour and the interviewers focus on the disability which I find are often substantial elements of how the post-illness artists’ identity is examined. Herein, it is obvious that Stanczaks’ identity as an artist will always be completely intermeshed with his physical condition, especially from an external standpoint.  From that outside  point of view it might seem that the loss of the use of the dominant arm for an artist would be an insurmountable catastrophe, however, in the adjustment to left-handedness (which he himself cites above to Sherwin as being “Very Difficult”)we see how, as in the case of Hanna Cormick, he has reframed his relationship as an artist with his body, and thus, as is so often the case, the continuation of the person as an artist in the compromised body is an act of ‘Survival’ and a manifestation of the desire, and ultimately the capacity, of an ill artist to not just continue, but also to thrive in the post-illness period of their career.

Again, in Stanczaks obituary in Art News, Alex Greenberger cites the artists’ physical ailments as central to his identity:

“Many critics, Judd included, have been quick to see Stanczak’s work through the lens of his personal life. Julian Stanczak was born in Borownica, Poland, in 1928. He and his family were forced to work on a labour camp in Siberia during World War II. In his time there, he developed encephalitis, which ultimately rendered his right arm unusable. When he started painting, he was forced to work solely with his left arm, yet despite his handicap, he always worked alone, obsessively piling lines and shapes of various densities on his canvases by himself.“ (Greenberger. 2017)

So, in the post- period, Stanczak reorders the methodology of his practice, adjusting his processes to new and profoundly altered circumstances, and continues within these adjusted parameters. We also see how Stanczak discusses his continuation of his arts practice in terms of ‘Survival’, how he must survive (overcome) the affect of the illness so as to continue to create. In this, what we see is not necessarily the idea of recovery from the illness and a subsequent return to a pre-illness state, rather the idea of survival is one of finding a way to continue within the framework of the post-prognosis altered state. As with each of the artists I have discussed, or spoken with, and including my own experience, it would be reasonable to conclude that that which is survivable is potentially surmountable, and therefore continuation within new parameters is completely reasonable.

Thesis Research Segments.

1.

Consider a position that, whilst the healthy body of a practicing artist is discrete and its functions generally unnoticed, in incidences of serious illness questions arises as to what might be the ultimate impact of the illness on both the physical enacting, and subject matter, of the post-prognosis arts practice, and how both of these elements might manifest within the work.

2.

The fundamental material reality of an arts practice begins with the body. It impresses itself upon both the physical and emotional phenomena of its surroundings through the enacting of creative intention. The body (as a holistic definition of both the corporeal and psychological) is therefore the prime tool. Its interaction with the external, through both its tangible action and its desire for result, is at the centre of the practice. Whether these intentions are to create a palpable physical object, or to facilitate the possibility of new thought processes and/or emotional reactions, it is the action of the body in contest and/or friction with its surrounding phenomena that stimulates the possibility of a desired outcome.

3.

A healthy body, unseen and quiet, functioning surreptitiously, like the unnoticed pulse of blood flow, hardly registering until there is an intervention; the plank breaks, the pain shouts, the outline is filled in with cracks and abrasions, with shadows and shades, the body is seen and heard, it becomes apparent, and in this new condition it can feel both strange and alien. This idea of this newly alienated body and its new strangeness lead me to considering how the shifts and alterations manifest in the conditions of the ill body can be framed in terms of the queering of the body. Here, the ill body might come to be regarded as queer in relation to perceptions around expected functionality or performance, as the body can almost take on a kind of perceived otherness, its condition seen as somewhat different to expectation, so that which might now be seen as queer becomes the apparent, the noticed; the sick/queer body is now see-able.

4.

The actuality of the scenario of functioning within the constraints of the post-prognosis body, in so far as we have the understanding, perhaps, of the permanence of the new bodily narrative, and also some understanding of how we might negotiate the landscape of such is still the reality of what had been before and how the original narrative might always be held in a framework of nostalgia and longing. This nostalgia itself can naturally become part of the process of understanding our relationship to our new narrative, as the old body has been subsumed by the new one; there is a constant learning, and an acceptance. We must understand our relationship to, and our mourning of, the previous self, almost as much as we must understand the new self. A significant part of this is the recognition of the new conditions around our body and our processes.

5.

Ultimately, I believe that as an illness is manifested in an artists’ work or processes, we then may see unveiled the way in which the relationship between the artist and the illness is viewed and/or coped with by the artist, and this is a moment of learning, wherein, once we can extract what seems to be more apparent, or explicit, meaning form the art of an ill artist, we can understand the importance of an illness to an arts practice, and how its’ affects, both positive and detrimental, can be still viewed as important, and ultimately having a position of potential value to the development of that practice.

6.

The onset (or points of diagnosis/prognosis) of an illness that has a physical aspect to it does not necessarily prevent the full continuation of a viable arts practice, but it would be reasonable enough to expect that there is still a reimagining in relation to how the post diagnosis/prognosis relationship with futurity and potential experience can be looked at, especially if the illness is limiting or makes one feel that it is insurmountable, and may lead to the addressing of certain priorities, or indeed reimagining them.

7.

In the context of the creative practice, the experience of illness could be seen as the manifestation of an understanding of the reality of a future finite point at which all possibility of continuation is extinguished. It is as if the new visibility of the ill body is a fore warning of the absolute void, and perhaps, acts as a definitive bracketing of the term of the artists practice.

Louisa Buck Essay (2018).

Louisa Buck, Well Chosen Words.

As our most common approach is to  come to art physically, phenomenally, face on, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that somehow that might be the whole of the experience, and that all the required, or desired, conclusions will be contained within that physical interaction. Therefore, in consideration of the apparent completeness of this interaction we could reasonably ask that when an art writer/critic like Louisa Buck writes about the very same work or show (which we have witnessed, or intend to witness), what is the added value of their words, what changes? And furthermore, what is the function that the art writer serves? An entree to the main course? A dressing?  The waiter? The dishwasher? Where can they be positioned within the experience? Are they simply justifying their own existence, or perhaps, more pertinently, if we are prone to considering our gratis opening night glass as half full, are they justifying arts existence?

It might feel that we have just landed into a whole series of unanswered (maybe unanswerable, or at least difficult to answer) questions, but that’s exactly the point; artworks often are, in their most direct form, questions for the audience to consider, and the art writers job isn’t always the basic task of providing unambiguous answers to any possible questions that may arise; they are not necessarily engaged to be code breakers, (although, as we will see below, when we look at Buck’s view of The Stuckists, sometimes the art writer is compelled to simply call it as they see it). With that in mind it would probably be most accurate to think that in an overall sense their role is to show us how the questions might best be asked, framed, or even approached, to cut away the dressing a little, to show us a path whereon we can find our own access. Whilst Francis Bacon was quoted as saying “The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery”, it would be unfair to expect that the role of the art writer might simply be to flip this, rather I would think that their particular job is more to direct us towards the mystery, turn the lights up a little, and be an aide to our discovery.

Gleefully turning up the lights and illuminating artistic ideas is certainly a role that Buck vigourously takes on, armed with some wit, honesty and a precise and insightful vocabulary, as well as a deep knowledge of her chosen field and the subjects therein, indeed she sometimes gets so concise that she seems to deliver details and histories in tiny but perfectly presented digestible morsels, chop, chop, chop, you find yourself somewhat enlightened, by the perfectly formed, no nonsense delivery,  she has cut to the chase, nothing superfluous, no garnish nor gravy.

If we look for instance at the central section in her review of Surface Work (11/4 – 16/6/2018, Victoria Miro and Victoria Miro Mayfair Galleries, London) she zips through a quick fire selection of potted histories of her subjects, even happily abbreviating abstract expressionism to almost text-speak, yet communicating with a rich immediacy some important historical points, conveyed in a few shimmering lines of text:       

“Much of the Ab-Ex earlier work can be found in Miro’s Mayfair gallery, including the crisp geometries of Brazilian Lygia Clark, the vivid forms of Harlem-based artist-activist Betty Blayton, the hovering horizontal bars of Romanian-born Hedda Sterne and the bouncing biomorphic forms of early British Abstractionist, Paule Vézelay. (The latter was born Marjorie Watkins Williams in Bristol before moving to Paris in 1926, where she worked alongside Masson and Miro and exoticised her name..“ (Victoria Miro celebrates the female artists that shaped abstract art as we know it, The Telegraph, 20/04/2018)

Basically a single sentence tidily crammed full of information, timeframes, geography, style and supplementary biographical details, beautiful brevity. And that is the interesting challenge to the art writer, especially when addressing the task of writing about a show of over 50 artists and the constrictive limitations of cramming information into a one-shot newspaper article, writing slim and chaff-free sequences, hitting all the marks, and leaving us, the readers, intrigued and hungry. How much, for instance has she so subtly alluded to by the contextual use of the word “exoticised”?

Her article dances on, individual lines encompassing whole thought processes, with a succinct choice of words, she describes Loie Hollowell’s painted work Linked Lingam (2018) with the simple phrase: “Suggestive Clefts and Bulges”, a prosaic and poetic four words that conjure up a potential world of sensuality. Elsewhere we find her describing a detail of the gashed azulejos terracotta work: Parade Con Incisáo Lucio Fontana (2002) by Adriana Varejao as “An almost unbearably visceral fissure” contains enough discomforting visual data to make one brace oneself in anticipation of the possibility of actually seeing the work in the flesh (so to speak).

She is also happy in the article, to elevate these often criminally overlooked female artists to a more deserved central historic role in the development of Abstract Expressionism, comfortable with juxtaposing them favourably with their male contemporaries, or indeed, rightly placing them into a position of greater relevance in terms of significance and importance, pointing out that the boys had their well documented moment(s), but here come some of the real innovators, the unsung and undervalued vanguard whom Buck is not going to let slip past you without your acknowledgement. The reader will definitely come away from her writing with an intriguing checklist of fresh names to type into Google (or the search engine of your choice), or perhaps even, the desire to spend a long enlightening afternoon in a library, reading tomes on these fascinating female artists which the librarians especially ordered in for you due to the manspreading of Pollock, Picasso and Gauguin on the shelves. All of her little vignettes and crafted words act as an invitation to an expanding universe of fresh artists and ideas.

She was also forthright and confident enough, earlier on in her career,  to describe the work of the Stuckists, as “just plain cack”, (The Big Issue, 5/2/2001) which got up their nose enough for them to crassly try to dismiss her an “airhead”, and that again shows her simply cutting to the chase, no superfluous fluff or hyperbole, and this directness has been a common theme, or perhaps, more accurately, the bedrock of her writing, and there is certainly an attractive accessibility in being direct and clear. We then find her, four years later, on the judging panel of the Turner prize when Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No. 2) by Simon Starling won, an artwork definitely not “Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!” (Tracey Emin to Billy Childish about his painterly practice in or around 1999) in a spirit-thinned rut. And so we have her being honest, being clear, this is cack, that’s how she sees it, her vocabulary unadorned, yet still fluid and attractive, full of succinct insights, playing the game as it should be played perhaps. Telling us enough to know where to look, or indeed when to slightly avert our gaze, to be prepared, or in retrospect to re-examine and delve in to all the right nooks, and at the end, the experience of interacting with her words will allow us to think a little deeper and, most likely, clearer about the artworks and artists she is writing about.

Buck regularly produces pieces for publications such as The Art Newspaper (founded 1990 London/New York) and sites like telegraph.co.uk as well as penning books on the subject of art beginning with Relative Values, Or, What’s Art Worth? ( BBC Books, 1991) wherein she addresses subjects such as why we attach such importance to the originality of art, or indeed does the financial value of art relate to actual artistry, right up to 2016’s Grayson Perry: My Pretty Little Art Career, co-authored with philosophy writer Julian Baggini, and produced by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia relating to the Sydney International Art Series (Exclusive, big-hitter Exhibitions in Sydney each Summer) looking in depth at Perry’s show therein. Aside from these she has penned several other books often looking at subjects such as the art economy in Market Matters: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Art Market (2004, The Arts Council England) or the rise in interest in British art in the 1990’s in Moving Targets 2: A Users Guide to British Art Now (2000, Tate).

She is definitely a contemporary British Art writer examining contemporary British Artists, but that in itself is a substantially interesting and expansive field, leading on from the whole buzz of the YBA’s and her clear voice is an important one aiding in the demystifying and perhaps the un-jumbling of some of the hype surrounding that whole period and the subsequent swollen markets and egos that came with it and thus skillfully pointing us, with a characteristic and trustworthy ease and honesty, towards a place where we can examine the questions that the art asks.

References:

Buck, L. (1991) Relative Values, Or, What’s Art Worth?. England: BBC Books.

Buck, L. (2000) Moving Targets 2: A Users Guide to British Art Now. England: Tate.

 Buck L. (2001) The Big Issue, [Published:5/2/2001] London: The Big Issue.

Buck, L. (2004) Market Matters: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Art Market. England: The Arts Council.

Buck, L. (20 Apr. 2018) Victoria Miro celebrates the female artists that shaped abstract art as we know  it. The Telegraph, [Online]. Available at:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/art/surface-work-victoria-miro-gallery-mayfair/ [Accessed: 31 Oct. 2018]

Perry,G, Baggini, J. (2016).: My Pretty Little Art Career.  Australia:The Museum of Contemporary Art.

Shout out the window

The world beyond the bubble can seem unfathomable, distant and unfamiliar. Art from within might struggle to spread out into this dangerous place… Ideas struggle to swim, or to even be thought… they might feel like they have no frame to hang upon. When you can’t reach out and touch it, can you experience it?

The art of this isolation is also from it, it has grown out of it, it is a new conflict-art in some ways, it is about the fight. You can still shout your ideas out into the void, like some twitter chimpanzee, with or without the necessity for an echo.. but a mirror is also not an echo, you can look into it and get all the information you need, all the feedback.

The restrictive borders of this newish world need not be a limit.. to not be afraid to send it where it can go…. it is of, and for, what it needs t be for…

Newspaper Article about my Practice.

Twenty Twenty One

New year hope? It’s questionable…Where to start? It’s hardly ideal. Bowie professed that we had 5 years, well, he’s gone five years and we haven’t done a great job.

I don’t think that the pandemic will have a wholly upward affect on creativity, in so far as I think it might be simplistic to try to draw lines or parallels… The crushing losses of these last months may squeeze the creative impulses a little too much… some people will have suffered so much that it may be difficult to return to it… even if it is just the simple fact that financially, it may not be viable for some people anymore. It’s always easy to say that creativity explodes out of suffering or despair, but that may be an outward view that doesn’t examine the real pain at the centre of the creative gesture…. the artist expressing pain, may very well be grasping to escape it’s crush.

2021, will, despite it’s darkness, have it’s artistic expression, but an element of that expression is self therapy and the marks and etched lines of this horrible time will be as much in the psyche as on the canvas or paper.

Essay: Projections through an Ideological Lens (Coffee with Zizek).

I have composed for myself a reverie, reflecting on the speculative scenario of sitting down for a cup of coffee, in a recyclable, and therefore guilt reducing, cup, with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek (Born 1949, Ljubljana) initially bringing up the subject of how ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Pipers’ (Roderick George Toombs, Canadian Wrestler and Actor, 1954-2015) character, John Nada,  in the movie They Live (1988) so aptly signifies a paradigm of modern philosophical thinking and reactionary politics in relation to any current ideological framework., We’d quickly bypass considerations of the miniscule percentage of charitable contributions the coffee chain is making on our behalf, as a well advertised moral appeasement to materialistic habits, out of the price of our beverages, also ignoring the slightly burnt flavour (the source of the derogatory nickname “char-bucks”) then getting immersed in a discussion that would soon have the nearby tables eavesdropping in uncomfortable fascination. Maybe one of our table neighbours would approach, exclaiming “You look like Slavoj Zizek”, to which he replies, “I am Slavoj Zizek”, leading them to answer “Then, no wonder you look like him”, to paraphrase Michel Pecheux (French Linguist and Philosopher, 1938-1983) who himself was somewhat paraphrasing the quote from the character Captain Spaulding (Played by Julius “Groucho” Marx, 1890 -1977 ) from the Mark Brothers film Animal Crackers (1930)  about which Zizek proposes that Pecheux is supplementing Marxism with the Marx Brothers (Zizek, S. 1989, Introduction XXV, The Sublime Object of Ideology). However, the real reason I am in this imaginary coffee emporium is that I have just watched the documentary The Perverts Guide to Ideology, (2012) and having re-watched They Live in the preceding weeks by happenstance, I have mentally constructed an opportunity to interrogate the philosophical ideas therein and thereof.

The structure of the Perverts Guide to Ideology is, upon reflection, very much a straightforward cinematic presentation of a philosophical essay, wherein the film clips, material objects and musical pieces function very much like references within a written text, and with Zizek simply the embodiment of the author’s voice. Possibly, as a guide to the thought processes in action, and to better understand his authorial standpoint,  we could  look back to where Zizek himself states that “Post-structuralism claims that a text is always ‘framed’ by its own commentary: the interpretation of a literary text resides on the same plane as its ‘object’. Thus the interpretation is included in the literary corpus: there is no ‘pure’ literary object that would not contain an element of interpretation, of distance towards its immediate meaning.” (Zizek S.1989, p.171) From this it is easy for us to conclude that Zizek is telling us that he does not believe that it is possible for the author (or their ideological standpoint) to not be present( nor to die) within the text ( Barthes R, 1967,Aspen Journal 5-6) and indeed it is easy to expand upon this idea, that nothing which can be read, seen or experienced is actually universal, and rather, as each of us views our own personal rainbow, it is down to the authors and/or viewers own imposition of a perceived reality rather that a direct explanation, that everything we witness becomes an object, or phenomena, which we can only describe in relation to the previous phenomena of our experience, just as Liam Gillick, (Artist, Born Aylesbury UK, 1954) makes the statement “A depicted horse is not a critique of a horse”, in the title of his solo show in the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (running 23/11/2018 – 19/01/2019) so we can extrapolate that a drawing of a horse is not a universal description of a horse, rather it is a the artists own interpretation of the experience of a horse in which the author remains present. It also seems abundantly evident that Zizek the author is very much alive, and present, within his texts, and in the narrative and visuals of The Perverts Guide to Ideology he often assumes a physical presence, digitally injected into the scenery of the film clips he discusses and disassembles, a humourous and sometimes provocative commentator, a live author, an objective interpreter. And so, as we delve into the philosophical contexts he examines we see his desire to be within his work, he thinks and lo! There he is, and he wants to be present, not just a guide or narrator, but very much the infernal Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, born Italy, 70BC – 19BC) to our  cinematic tourist Dante (Dante degli Aligheri, Born Italy,  1265 – 1321) as in the Inferno section of his 14^th Century epic poem The Divine Comedy. It feels that his approach is to insert himself into the structural form of cinema, so whilst Zizek quite often addresses us from a point of thinking that could be considered to be far past post-structuralism, it is realistic to examine the idea of film making as somewhat structuralist, in its most basic form, it is a simple visual language, with some flourishes, but relatively restricted by this language, and so, when he presents his ideas in cinematic form he somewhat gives himself over to a structure which is more constrained than the written word, as the images are created for you, rather than you being allowed to interpret the words into your own imagined visuals, and thus the linguistic/cinematic structure is adhered to through the necessity of the medium.

When Dante (the poet) invented the visual landscape of hell for his audience, what he was really doing was presenting an idea through an ideological lens (The idea of such a lens is very much referenced in the fight scene from They Live which Zizek examines at the beginning of the film), and it would certainly appear that Zizek wants to be perceived as Nada type interpreter, forcing the glasses onto us, or more aptly, he desires his films to be the glasses, to see, and in doing so  he wishes for us to see the ideology behind the world we are viewing, whilst, in part, presenting it through the prism of his own ideological thinking, for even in the state of  trying to dismantle the framework of an ideology, you are complicit in  envisioning its replacement. Indeed when he says (around 6.17 in the film), that “ideology is not simply imposed, it is our spontaneous relationship with the world”, he is proposing a system wherein it would be utterly unavoidable to not have an ideology at any given juncture, and  his goal seems to be to tell us that no art can be truly viewed from without of an ideology. He makes the argument, therefore, like the individuality of the viewed rainbow, that our subjectivity is a manifestation of our own ideology, and our ideology is the structure. From this it is possible for us to extrapolate that no artwork can be viewed through any lens other than that of ideology, and when Zizek dissects the inherent themes in the various movies he talks about, we find he clarifies this in gradual steps. To further examine this idea, we must first accept, or at least entertain the idea, that we ourselves are all adherents to an ideology and thus that we place everything we examine upon the structure of such. Even if we appear to be a follower of a dictated group ideology, we would have to consider it as off-the-peg, and even should we desire to adhere to it absolutely it is still a generic item whose approximate fit hangs off of the shoulders of our thinking in an individual way, and the aforementioned proposal that our individual ideology is our spontaneous relationship to the world means that he is saying that ideology cannot be anything but of the individual, just as our being cannot be anything but of itself, and our presence within any given system is represented by how we, as a manifestation of a physical intensity (or in the case of an ideological system, the intrusion of our individual philosophy into our ideological surroundings) impress upon the system. Zizek’s cinematic injections function in a similar way, as he becomes an embodiment of a thought process. In the same way as when we stand in front of an artwork, view a film or listen to a piece of music, so we are impressing upon the original intentionality of the artwork our own ideological dialectic and thus projecting our reaction.

Zizek also demonstrates the potential of contradictory ideological interpretations of an artwork when he examines the multiple adaptations of Ludwig van Beethoven’s (Born Bonn, Germany. 1770 – 1827)  9^th  Symphony, Ode To Joy (Composed 1822-1824) by various political regimes, both for benign purposes and propagandising. He examines whether the piece represents a sense of brotherhood, but perhaps it would be more apt for us to consider that what he means is a fraternity of adherence to an imposed ideology, be it National Socialism, Communism or ideas of Political Unification, all seemingly disparate ideologies, yet comfortable in their adaptation of a musical artwork as emblematic of their particular ideals. It has become an anthem, both symbolically and  in the case of the pre-unification East/West Germanys’ combined Olympic teams of the 1980s, practically a substitute anthem. Perhaps it is simply its familiarity that engenders an ease of adaptation. That as an artistic object (commodity) it is already in the communal psyche, and therefore when an ideological bias is associated with it, it is much more easily assimilated by the consumer masses. Again, this is something that Zizek seems to desire to tell us, that art objects easily come to signify core ideological themes, and in the current ideology of consumerism, these objects, such as the money in They Live, become our “New Gods” and thus the possession of them, or identification with them represents a new ideological adherence, an identity, a membership of a fraternity. Whilst not addressed in the film I am drawn to the idea of the two minute hate (Orwell, G.1984, p. 25-26) and its mirrors in the MAGA( Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” vacuous rallying cry) adherents parroting chants act as a kind or praying to an ideological identity, just as Zizek riffs on the “Coke is It” slogan, then it is possible to see mantras everywhere, so could Nikes “Just Do It” really be interpreted as an adaptation of  the Thelemic religious philosophy, best defined as: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”, developed by Aleister Crowley ( 1875 – 1947 Born:  Royal Leamington Spa) in the early 1900s.and therefore ultimately definable as being a consumerist prayer? And within this consumerism, where Zizek dismantles the Kinder Egg (around 17.30 in the film) as a metaphor for an inner void of desire, are we always striving for the central goal rather than the surface, just as with our ideology, we strive for understanding, and in our interactions with movies and/or works of art we desire to identify meanings and themes which are compatible with our ideological thinking, and sometimes even if the artwork is in opposition to our ideology, we would still be able to view it as an inverted affirmation of our thinking, adapting the motivation that lay behind the Degenerate Art Show in Munich in 1937 staged by the Nazi Party artist and politician Adolf Ziegler (Born Bremen.1892 – 1959) to demonstrate what they believed to be wrong with art as a way of affirming the aesthetic ideology of what they believed to be right,

Ultimately, the core tenet of The Perverts Guide to Ideology is that we are subject to an immutable belief system, which, whilst always prone to affect, has at its core a subconscious law of the self and its unfulfilled desires, and that we apply this law in all interactions with phenomena, and that therefore we are the physical and emotional manifestation of our individual ideology and inescapably beholden to it. So, as we finish our coffees and settle our bill we quietly conclude that obeyance to our core ideology is an inescapable function of human desire.

Art is Work

Every moment of entertainment that has been experienced during these past months is an expression of art… every tv show, spotify playlist, book.. they involve the creative processes associated with artistry. Creative people have made the work that has helped us maintain.

Musicians are getting absolutely crushed, their outlets gone, the opportunities on the internet are a billionaires insult to their talent.

They might not seem vital, or crucial in a superficial manner, but they are functioning in a manner which has always tapped into the potential for positive mental health, music and art and poetry and cinema touch upon our emotional surface, they address the moments of sadness and loss, they express joy, and all of these things are currently swirling about in this maelstrom of uncertainty.

If a poem, song, film, artwork gives a moment of comfort from the chaos, then the artists work is done…. but the artist too is in the storm with you, don’t forget them.

Creativity in an Ongoing Instance of Havoc.

Suddenly, it might seem that you have a ton of time on your hands.. your fragile body, vulnerable and nervous, isolated from the outside world of insidious illness. So much time, within the rooms, maybe a garden.. locked in there for your own good. What an awesome opportunity, it might be imagined…..

But…

Within that shell, there is not an immunity from any creeping dread, nervousness, or indeed, grief for a world gone ill or anger at nonchalance that pushes the already unhealthy towards the chasm… humans are wonderful, but some of them are shit…

It is not as universally ideal an opportunity as it might be cited to be.. it is an abyss too.. too much tension and bad news to focus on…

Assumptions of a deluge of opportunity-awaiting essays and novels, paintings and masterworks might go unaddressed…

This is not a simple situation… and whilst there are some simple strategies to cope…. it might not be simple for a person to listen to an inner voice of inspiration above a swelling clamor of invasive negative thoughts…

This is a complex situation… we will continue to create, and to care… and to look out for each other… just, for now, we can’t expect miracles, but we can still find the magic of kindness as both a comfort and inspiration.

Beauty will blossom.

A gentle exorcism.

The spirit world does not exist, that’s a given. But art is packed with ghosts, haunted in every corner…. the presence of memory, trauma, stress and joy…. hanging on in the margins and gestural marks. Sometimes it would be impossible to imagine it without the memories percolating…
And so, in the act of creation, perhaps lies a gentle exorcism, or a releasing, opening ones doors and allowing free the weights of grief and memory.