One more time with feeling...

I know it when I feel it...

There is a starting point.

It isn't a photographic image.

More than an image there is an urge.

First strokes of a brush pen.

I am taken up, defined in a curve.

First angles, first volumes of the body.

Whose body?

Whose body will it be?

Verticality.

Crosshatching.

Lettering, familiar scribbled lettering.

EXHAUSTED.

Change implement.

Where's that red BIC pen?

I need that red BIC pen.

I need it's cut into the paper.

I need it's disresepect.

I had some time, some peace, some desire.

Going back to school.

I had been working on my drawing technique, academically, like I used to do at school.

I hated it.

There are moments when my soul erupts in revolt at constraints which I have accepted being imposed on myself.

There are moments when I feel the need to return to basics - "What the fuck is perspective?"

Oh that loaded word "ARTIST".

Oh I hate labels: writer, artist, academic, researcher, all that malarkey.

We are all imposters.

I feel reassured learning more about the voices of artists behind their work.

Picasso that archetype who would altenate between "studies" -  careful "drawing" and apparent flourishes of revolt.

The artist was inseparable from the man, the lover, the refugee.

A man who at times fell into despair when thinking of the appearance of photography.

What should an artist do when faced with "photorealism"?

"I might as well kill myself"... he thought.

"Picasso decided to paint what he felt not what he saw."

Flashmobbing...

So I am tagging along with INKTOBER...

Who are the artists, hobbyists, inconnus in INKTOBER inseparable from?

DISMALAND INSTAGRAM? 
DISMALAND TWITTER? 
DISMALAND FACEBOOK?

What the hell am I doing here?
What the hell are we doing here.

I can only speak for myself.

I have enough context of my own without questioning that of others....

Stop asking too many questions.

Do it, fuck it, do it.

Do it if you feel it.

I am accepting the constraint, the weird prompts, the challenge, pushing myself to submit to the crowd.

I want to find out where it will take me, what I will learn along the way. 

Writing here, now, is my way of finding my way, of reflecting on the task in hand.

I can feel that crowd, that mob excitement, hysteria  violence even in INKTOBER.

Doing "INKTOBER" I feel distracted and perturbed by the stream upon stream of cartoon monsters.

I feel alienation from fucking venomous superheroes, fantasy novella charicatures, Disney fairies, princesses, princes.

I look at the profiles, hobbyist, artist, please DM for commissions.

I wonder at times what the fuck INKTOBER means?

What does it mean to me?

What does any flashmob drawn together mean?

What does it matter?

It doesn't matter.

Do it, fuck it, do it.

Is it a community, a souk, a gallery, a supermarket, a trading floor, a show?

Yes, all of that.

Do I feel alone together?

I feel at times that I am in Mangaland, Mangledland, Dismaland perhaps?

Dismaland...

I was reading yesterday about Banksy's Dismaland.

"Banksy's Dismaland: amusements and anarchism in artist's biggest project yet."

Well actually I was reading about his pièce de résistance (really?) the shredded balloon girl.

Banksy artwork self-destructs after selling at auction for £1m – video https://t.co/2jpCZK2aXf

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) October 7, 2018

Good old Banksy, apparently he's added 50% of value to his shredded and signed screen print.

He's even been tagging on to a Basquiat exhibition.

Basquiat's value is ballooned with rarity as a member of the 27 CLUB.

TWELVE GREAT ARTISTS WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY SEVEN

Banksy is already too old, too knowing for that.

Two new Banksy artworks appear on wall of Barbican centre

BRITART.

I have been studying artland these past few days....

There was Damien Hirst laughing all the way to the bank...the richest living "artist".

Sharks in suits, sharks in formaldelhyde, cows and calves cut in two with chain saws.

Jewelled skulls, subcontracted spot paintings.

Then there was Francis Bacon and his abattoir art.

Abused, deranged, skin canvas scarred with life.

He had skin in the game, and blood on his hands.

The lunatics have escaped the asylum....

Art is an asylum, it appears....

I watched a great documentary about "Outsider Artists".

And I think to myself, that art or this stuff here is indeed an asylum, a means of escape, or is it the only real way not to escape?

And I think about the self-promotional reputational economy in academia, in artland, in celebrity land, or in sham-democracyland.

 I feel a desperate need to find escape or at least to protest.

I suppose whatever the motivation behind the lines, between  the lies, behind the dollar signs, behind the hashtags, behind the crosshatching, there is something innately moving about this human need for scratching out an existence thus...

We are caught quaking between light and darkness, finding shading between sense and nonsense.

How shall we flesh out our bare bones?

Who will choose which marks of ours live on?

Who the fuck cares?

We all end up in shreds.

Turnkey laments.

Just don't understand it.

I smile at 'em, jolly 'em along.

I pay attention not to spill their food.

Just don't understand it.

I believe in my educational role.

I even organise outings for some of 'em.

I smile at 'em, jolly 'em along.

I pay attention not to be unfair in my comments.

They just don't pay attention.

They just don't play the game right.

They just don't put their heart and soul in it.

They don't take their work seriously.

They're just looking to score enough points for smokes.

I put my life into the job.

I read those books.

I tried all those motivating tricks and the like.

I even did research like... a while.

The guvnor thought I was crazy.

"This is a bloody prison not a kindergarten," he said.

I thought that was pushing it a bit.

I am more than sympathetic to their plight.

I was in their shoes once.

I don't see difference between black and white, man or woman.

I am open-minded, I'm empathetic even.

I smile at 'em, I jolly 'em along.

Anyone would think that they'd be pleased to see the back of me.

Just don't understand it.

Cellnotes.

“Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”

Michel Foucault.

Footnotes

Inspired by Terry Elliott's reading of a Bertolt Brecht Fable.

Suffer the children.

Tahitiennes in mission clothing

It had all gone quiet outside.

I sat cramped up between the toilet bowl and the wall.

I kept my head down.

I was thus invisible to anyone able to look in through the window.

I had thought it through.

This was rebellion.

I had locked myself in the toilet.

No amount of pleading or threats would change my mind.

I wouldn't go to church.

I wouldn't go to church.

I wouldn't go to church.

"You have to get them when they are young." 

The Jesuits would say.

I knew that I disbelieved young.

I had been taken to church.

I had been taught to say my prayers.

I never ever had a clue about what the point of it all was.

I had sat through hour after hour of hymn, prayer, sermon.

I successfully dropped out of Sunday School.

There were shocked silences when my brother announced to the family:

"Simon doesn't believe in God."

I must have been about eight years old.

I felt alone.

I had had enough of keeping up appearances.

I was prepared to deal with the fall-out.

I was fortunate that I had the parents that I had.

My friend feared admitting disbelief to his Jehova's Witness parents

He preferred to feign belief rather than be left alone.

Colonisation of childhood

I was thinking about the term "colonisation". 

I was thinking about the term "childhood".

According to Neil Postman literacy changed European visions of childhood.

"Literate man" was adult man and adulthood had to be earned.

"It became a symbolic, not a biological achievement. From print onward, the young would have to become adults, and they would have to do it by learning to read, by entering the world of typography, and they would do it by learning to read. And in order to accomplish that they would require education. Therefore,  European civilization reinvented schools. And by so doing made childhood a necessity."

What is the line between upbringing, education, colonisation? I wonder.

Does one beat belief into a child?

Does disbelief come from literacy?

I remembered images of Amazonian "Indians" dressed in Mission Wear.

I fell upon an article entitled:

"The Colonisation of Maori Children."

http://www.kaupapamaori.com/assets//SmithL/nga_aho_o_te_kakahu_matauranga_chpt8.pdf

How much does school disconnect?

How much does (our) literacy deny?

I read:

"Maori beliefs about children can be located within a world view in which language, landscape, time space, relationships and technology were all interconnected. Children themselves were markers of history and repositories of knowledge...Children were also known to have participated in politics and decision making of community life."

Maori culture and their relationships with their own children were fundamentally threatened by schooling.

Within what world view would we locate our beliefs about children?

What would so called "digital literacy" disconnect?

Would the destruction of Amazonian forest, and the disappearance of Amazonian peoples have anything to do with "our" literacy, "our beliefs", "our education", "our" disconnections?