It's been four years since I've posted on this blog. It was originally an art blog for my collage work and pattern designs. I stopped writing in at as I reached a point where I was busy writing other things. One of these is a book that's recently been published called Hole Punch. I had a review of Hole Punch where the reviewer kindly did some research on me and discovered this blog and put a link in it in her review. So I decided to update the blog with a post, as it looks a bit embarrassing to have a blog that's not been updated for four years.
Anyway, here's the front cover of Hole Punch.
There's also a website you can visit at www.holepunchbook.co.uk - each week I'll be adding a new image to the site. It functions as a kind of web comic. Also, if you're so inclined feel free to purchase Hole Punch on Amazon.
Thanks very much :). That's a bit of a boring post but I'll maybe be adding better ones later.
Here are the last 7 month's worth of images of the non so gradually changing "mural" outside of Proof in Chorlton, Manchester. (This post updated on 27-1-2017)
The worm eats upwards through the sludge but there is always more sludge
Sludge sludge sludge....
The worm reaches the top of the sludge and feels exhulted and free in the open air
Open, cold, What?
A boot covered in sludge tramples the worm back into the sludge
Sludge sludge sludge.
The worm wakes up and has a spine and remembers it’s a person,
WHY WHY WHY?
The worm steps outside and sees all the other worms
Worms worms worms
On a street corner a different worm talks about transcendence and beauty
Hope hope hope
The worm remembers it’s dream of being trampled back into the dirt
Dirt dirt dirt
It wants to tell them all that the only beauty above them is more:
Sludge sludge sludge (and boots)
In episode 2 of Sludge Sludge Sluge: the worm gets hit by a car and as he lays in a coma in hospital he dreams of being a worm crawling up a cat's intestine... and eventually he gets pooed out into a litter tray full of sludge sludge sludge
I applied for the Chorlton Arts Festival back in September
with two proposals, one of a normal exhibition and the other to interfere with
and distort an area of public space.Like
most applications for arts related things I listed my accolades and wrote the
proposal in a way that I thought would come across as arrogant and off
putting.So I was quite surprised to be
allowed to complete both of my proposals as two separate intertwined
events.So there is a lesson in
that.Coy, evasive, polite Englishness isn’t
the best approach to writing artistic proposals and confidence is not
necessarily arrogance.
I went to set up my “installation” or “mural” on Sunday
morning at 5:30am.At 6:30am a man came
up to me asking if I had permission.I
pulled the brochure out of my pocket and opened it to the right page.“See.Outside Proof.This year.That’s me.I’m here.”I told him.I asked him if he worked there and then he
said he owned the building.After which
he got inside a black cab taxi’s driver’s seat and drove off.So maybe he is the owner or maybe he just
enjoys saying he is the owner of buildings.
Speaking of tall tales after this I was approached by Jesus
Christ.Or someone claiming to be
him.Though in reality one of Chorlton’s
best histrionic old men.He didn’t
remember me speaking to him 2 years ago.
But why would he? He has so much effort invested within his performance that the real world barely drizzles into him. Would Al Pacino recognize you even though you saw him on the telly once?
I forgot my phone and was meant to be meeting the festival
instagrammer some time around 9am so I had to walk home.At this point it was all just about almost
finished and I was in a sleep deprived self involved feeling of artistic fanciful freedom from
the realities of flesh.This was then
destroyed when I turned the corner and saw what at first I thought was a
sleeping cat.But as I got closer
noticed it was a cat with it’s organs ripped out, that had been tossed about
violently and broken and spattered.
In visions like the above you become confronted with the
truth.That underneath the clean walls
and flat surfaces everything is reducible to gloop, the plastic lives we live
doesn’t go anywhere beyond this surface so when the true nature of gloop and
death is shown to us we just recoil because it shouldn’t exist in our tiny,
self limited worlds. The end of our
lives is usually hooked up to some tubes and needles and all our conflict and
war comes to whatever it rationalizations or lack of rationalizations we
have.Death is not beautiful in our
culture.Dead cats with their intestines
on the pavement are not beautiful to me.It
was the biggest attack ever on my aesthetic sensibilities. But it was the most real thing I've seen all year.
Much as this disturbed me I repressed the experience after I
dealt with it.And considering it now
then I realize that the work I’ve created is in a sense attempting to operate
on the level of a dead cat.It is
essentially street art designed to be inaccessible.Unaesthetically pleasing.Following no plastic populist Golden Ratio.Making no references to anything but
itself.It is untidy, in terms of
production, execution and in presentation.It’s a part of me that is laughing at clock towers, mobile phone shops
and hospital beds.The dreary
compartments and hospitality of the different places we phase into.Every life a series of transactions.Bound in a Social Contract none of us ever
see or sign. We are doing their very
best to be unchallenging, appealing and boot licking too each other as
possible.That’s how you do self
promotion.“Share me, like me, want me
then I will share you, like you, want you.” Most people don’t like a dead cat.Most people wouldn’t share a dead cat.Most people don’t want a dead cat.
Also I will be exhibiting at Tea Hive in Chorlton for the
next few weeks.I set up that exhibition
on Monday.So there is plenty of stuff
there for you to initiate one of your many life transactions with.
Evaluating myself on where I am now and in the past seems to be a useless way of evaluating creative development. In that my current state is fluctuating and altering whereas the images produced in the past stay still until they are reused or reinterpreted in the future. So it lacks a temporal placement for evaluation. Something unimportant 5 years ago can become important now. And I won't even remember where the original idea came from but the idea or image will still exist. Existence is temporary and changeable whereas images can be fixed and (more) permanent. Perhaps this is why I'm often working in temp jobs. Because something about the unfixed glue of my being means that I can only adapt but never fix into place. Never become a false statue corroding in an acid bath of linear stuff.
I've come to the realization that my artwork is in an uncomfortable inbetween place in the art world. It is too angsty, hard edged and sharp to be considered as decorative art (the sort of canvases that the majority of people buy are soft and edgeless. High resolution close ups of drops of water etc). It is too messy to be able to be graphic design or illustration (close up fussy obliteration of pixelated dirt). It is too fashionable and conceptual to be Fine Art and too traditional and full of effort to be conceptual art.
It's almost as if I've done everything I can to create a unique product.
The localization of accumulated shapes has no fixed or relevant centre and is therefore not a localization but more of a constant dribbling. Behind this is me. I get impatient with everything being disconnected, as it's my composition, intuitive or not, that is to blame for a lack of cohesion and a lack of reason. Reason is celebrated these days by the people who have no belief outside of the concrete "facts" that they can read. Plagiarized knowledge read from magazines, Google or heard in conversation with people they believe to be "intelligent". Intelligence only being a word when someone decided to label someone who has read lots of stuff and can work things out based on the things they have been told to think.
Due to the process of creating collages from years of self generated materials, one of my images can actually be said to have been created over a 10 year period. In the image above parts of it are from 2009 and parts of it are from. 2012 and 2013, but the final image itself was put finalized in 2016. So when labelling the art, and the year it was made, it is possible that I could label with the title, price, and then a series of specific years.
The issue with this method is that I can't actually remember what years certain parts of the image were made. So I just put the current year onto a new piece of artwork. Though the issue with doing that is not a practical issue but a psychological one. In that I don't feel as if I producing my own work as I am stealing the imagery from me between 2001 and 2015.
Unlike some people I am changeable and the me that I am now is not the me that I was 6 months ago. Therefore I can renounce all responsibility for anything that I have done in the past. So in the creation of new work forged from old work I am stealing from the ideas of someone else. Though that person doesn't exist anymore so it doesn't matter so much. And technically that person is me or some previous product of me. Even if me has now become something else.
There is nothing wrong with living in the Future Moment. People talk about the Present Moment far too much these days. What can be done in the Present Moment? What advances can be made? The Present Moment slips away stupidly whenever you try to grasp it. Attempting to influence the Present Moment is attempting to stand still on an escalator. Whereas if I make decisions in the here and now and predict what will happen and what use the repercussions of that action will have, then I am able to create and influence the Future Moment. Events are malleable and can be influenced therefore decreasing anxiety.
In terms of the Past Moment. There is no need to think about that. Especially if you have a method of collaging the past into a future.
From the sky upwards everything was a red so lacking in light that it hung heavy. An isolating glob sphere container for the death world Ukatrax, home of the Ukatraxians, the dominant life form of Ukatrax. Who built their cities with compressing green and miscalculated maths. Their habitats were stacked above one another without function. Their only design was a hole in which to throw away the bones of their children. Each mile of bodies would indicate a dead slave generation. The smell of history's rotting dust was Ukatrax's most celebrated aroma. We are dead forever.
My first blog entry of 2016. Mostly due to me being busy making artwork and also not-busy being interested in sharing my work publicly. At least not complete images. On my Facebook group I post incomplete fragments of the images being produced (which makes sense as my work is essentially a very large accumulation of incomplete fragments) and this blog was originally started to show how I progressively created my installation at the Bankley Gallery back in June 2011. Almost Five years ago. So this blog at times feels as if it has outlived it's use. In the following years after the installation I did some fairly interesting writing on here. Existential stuff and analytical thoughts about my creative progress. Some very good explorations of different voices and different ways of analysing my work and thought processes, and this taught me a lot about writing. So I don't regret keeping a blog. Just wondering why it should exist, what I can achieve from still having it? Should I leave it alone and not use it again or shall I post things as and when they become appropriate? See what I end up writing. One tactic I use to employ would be to make the font smaller on a paragraph like this, giving the illusion that my self doubt in this blog is minor. Allowing the more self promotional aspects paragraphs to gain size in font, if not in content.
Apologies for not writing much on my blog this year. In fact, this is my first entry. The above image is a new picture I made. It is called "Remote Distance Reserve" (working title) I have been very busy the past few months staying in and making lots of artwork. Being busy creatively. I will be having two exhibitions at the Chorlton Arts Festival this year. Details here.
Now to finalize I would say that I could post a new image on here every week in order to build up towards the opening of the festival. And towards any other exciting things that may happen in the next month or two.
The last wodge of diary pages from the end of 2015: I managed to finish this long drawn out project. Next year I am only doing a page a week diary.
9.11 - 10.11
Art which explores "form and function"... not sure how I feel about that sort of work. Conceptual art is a well worn joke that has been overused. And form and function should to be defined through engineering and mechanics etc. Taking art away from the artists ego was perhaps a huge historical misstep.. or perhaps not a misstep but more of a line of artistic enquiry that has been explored for too long. So modern art is stuck in a characterless stasis. Images like the one above and probably many within this blog prove nothing and mean nothing. They reach nowhere.... but if they were questioning what art is and whether a shovel can be a fork in a funny way then an elitist upper class would think they were clever for asking 100 year old questions that have already been answered.
11.11 - 12.11
The above image features my own blood... dribbled from my mouth after a short spat of gingivitis. The first time I used blood in one of my own images I was really disappointed as it dried brown. It is disappointing as blood has an imitable redness to it. Does putting something of my own body into my work make it more definably me... and also... by featuring my own DNA I am leaving open the potential for my body to be cloned and for my spirit to be raised from the dead in the near future. So for anyone reading this in the next century: HINT HINT.
13.11 - 15.11
It is arguable that consciousness is bound to the body. That a clone of me raised in the future would not be the same me that I am now but just a copy. This all depends on the definition of the self and it's properties. If the properties are exactly in the physical flesh soil of the plant pot of the body then the only life force that would be able to inhabit such an area would be the same as the one before. Our bodies apparently shift cells every 7 or something years but we are still the same people. Though obviously this a debatable. My plan to be rebuilt in the future is quite flawed if it's just a copy of me being made. That would be rubbish/
16.11 - 17.11
Going through a very prolific writing period of first draft stories: This afternoon I visited the Organarium. It was what I expected. Lots of organs. I gave them my donation slip. I wanted full removal of all my inessential parts. So I offered them everything... but they didn't want it. They said I was all sick inside. I walked home, simultaneously gagging and spluttering on the brown air. When I reached my metal coffin, propped in its usual place against the broken wall, I opened the lid and got inside. Closing myself in and cuddling up to the rough non departed bones of my wife. "I know." I replied, to her voice inside my head. "I'll have to think of some other way to pay off the mortgage.." She suggested taking her remains to the glue factory. "I don't want to be even more alone." I said... but i knew she was right. If I died without paying it then they would send my consciousness into the data pits for the rest of eternity... or until I mined enough Bit Coins to pay my way into death.
-----------------------
I went to the glue factory. Dragging my wife's bones in a sack behind me. Being super careful not to lose any of her parts.
The Glue Man was very sympathetic to me. Letting me have some of his cough medicine... though it didn't really do much what with all the boils of black puss inside my throat.
He took my wife's bones and ground them into glue. I cried when I heard her voice in my head saying "Goodbye Roland. Don't blame me for not getting insurance on our air conditioning."
I still blame her. Even after all these years.
The glue man gave me 25 credits and a USB dehumidifier. I asked him to give me more but he told me to clear off.
I spluttered and coughed my way back home again through the brown. Feeling dissatisfied but knowingly caught on the chain of the inevitable.
----------------------------------------
Precisely at midnight they came. They are never late and never early. They pulled me out of the metal coffin and zapped me with their taser guns.
"This one thought he could outrun debt." one of them laughed behind his gas mask.
As I writhed on the floor I tried to tell them that I wasn't trying to run... that they had me and I knew there was no escape. But the electric shocks just made me jitter and spasm randomly and painfully. After unnecessarily subduing me, they threw me on the back of their carriage with all the others they had collected that night.
I really wish that my wife had got insurance on our air conditioning.
18.11 - 19.11
The Substance was left in a huge heap in the centre of the factory. Everyone had gone home for the evening. The Substance untensed itself and allowed it's muscle mass to fall loose and gelatinous. It was now time for the Substance to relax.
They were never going to hurt the Substance. The Substance was well hard. For 10.000 years the Substance had been here. They had been hitting it with swords and hammers and bows and arrows... dropping heavy objects on it. Shooting it with cannons. The last 100 years was very inventive. Technological improvements. Last week they had put The Substance in a gigantic Microwave for an entire day. The Substance had quite enjoyed that. The way it made it feel all scrambled inside... the internal tingle of radiation was very erotic. Hopefully they would put The Substance back inside the Microwave again at some point.
The Substance sloshed gloopy and relaxed around the floor. It had come to quite enjoy this world and was sad that humanity was entering the last stage of total extinction. When they were gone then there would be no one to punish The Substance anymore. No more people to make The Substance tingle.
(I think I will call this story "Eternity's Gimp")
20.11 - 22.11
Last night I looked at my trail of words … they were the coordinate points of a dot to dot image. When all these dots were joined together I saw its image and saw it for what it was, and still is. I asked it: “what's wrong with me?” it rolled its eyes past me and upwards to the skies for answer. As if to dream and aspire to something better. Its face was blotched and water bloated by the snaky attentions of you and the others. It opened its lipless mouth to speak and a gloopy pink foam dribbled down its shape. No words. Streams of gloopy pink foam. I fell asleep again. My reflection closed Its tongue.
23.11 - 24.11
Stood on the chair to see out of the hotel room window, 6 year old Jeremy looked at the sunny beach below. It was covered in, what Jeremy thought, was the utter trash of humanity. He felt safe from this vantage point. He didn't want to go down there to interact with them all. The fat, ugly, old and stupid. The totally indefinable. The sun reflected from their exposed bodies making them look like a million pockmarks or warts on the yellow sand. Jeremy didn't want them to see him. If they saw him then it would create a connection. It would confirm that Jeremy was one of them. "Jeremy." shouted his mother, "we're going to the beach. Have you got your bucket and spade ready." "Oh fuck off won't you mother?" whined Jeremy.... hoping she would let him stay in the hotel room on his own. "Jeremy!" shouted his mother to scold him. "I'm feeling so sick." pleaded Jeremy. "I promise I will just go to sleep and I won't set fire to anyone like I did last time." Mother told him that they had to go out now. As a family. Jeremy pointed out of the window. "But look at them all mother. They are diseased! Why must you insist to degrade me by putting me among their ilk? No wonder I feel sick. Please mother I can't bear the sight of them. I don't want them to see me. It will only serve as confirmation that I am human. A mere animal! Why would you do this to me? Your Golden Boy." His mother asked where he would like to go. "Somewhere I can transcend!" screamed Jeremy.
********************************************
"Tell us a love story Mother" said the cockroach larvae, collectively, as they laid in their pile of post apocalyptic cheese. Mother stood over them, an old battered and radioactively resistant thing. "I'll tell you a love story." chittered the mother, angling her head to the side in thought. "The perfect love story. One you will never forget." The larvae wriggled in anticipation. "Once upon a time, before the cataclysm, there was humanity." "We know all about them." protested the larvae. "What could they have known about love? Have you not seen all this rubbish they built". The mother nodded. "They were most stupid and pointless beings to ever exist. However, what is the most fascinating thing about them is that even though they have no grasp upon love they would constantly strive for it. The human race existed for 200'000 years... which is nothing compared to the 300 million years that our species has survived." "Why were the humans so stupid Mother?" asked the larvae. "Well, there are many theories about this... some say that it was because they were greedy and war like... but I believe it is because they were ugly. Nothing could ever possibly love a human being... so human beings were naturally selfish, seeking each other out for warmth and for the affirmation of their ego. So this was what love meant to them. They were always on the search for beauty because they were so ugly... and the world and culture they created around them did nothing more than exaggerate this ugliness. Each human was secretly gripped by their own death instinct. Secretly they all wished they were dead. Which is why as a culture they arranged their own collective suicide. Can you imagine how painful it must be to be a human. To despise your own species and yourself." "Mother? Do you think this story is biased? Perhaps opinionated? They can't all have hated their species." "Shut up. They did. And this was why they had no grasp of love... but also why love was the most important thing ever to them. Listen. They even hated their own children. They would never had said so but secretly they did. They were searching for something in their children that didn't exist in themselves. Some form of purity of spirit. So children would always disappoint. Other humans would always disappoint. Their every achievement was a vain attempt to impress in order to justify their existence in their pointless terrible world. They used one another and they called it love." "What makes them different from us? We do the same. All life seems predisposed towards survival despite having to deal with the inevitability of death in a world we never asked to live within. Humans may be ugly and build useless things... but how are they different to us." The mother pulled out her antique human revolver and pointed it at the larvae. "Shut up and listen to my story otherwise you will disappoint me. OBEY!" The larvae conformed but developed another layer of hate towards authority... whilst at the same time desiring their own authority. "Humanity disagreed with itself and each individual hatched it's own breed of resentments and hatred to inflict on someone else. A constantly swirling whorl of pain stretching into and out of itself." The Mother carried on with her story. Was it meant to impress? Was it any good? Those doubts existed in her as she tried to feel better about herself by telling it. When the larvae fell asleep, they dreamed of eating Mother's dead body.
25.11 - 26.11
The planet Ukatrax is simultaneously the poorest and richest node in the entire Human Empire. It achieved this by being the largest known source of precious metals and minerals... but it's people, the Ukatraxi, are merely a class D pre Tech culture. Also they are the ugliest creatures ever, defying all subjective logic of aesthetic beauty. Small colourless eyes, one flat nostril, no chins, and toothless circular mouths gaping speechless and gormless. They are also disobedient.
---------------------------------
The slave masters stood over the Ukatraxi as they digged in the underground mines. Whenever they whipped them they couldn't help but laugh. It was the way the electricified horse tail would make them scream so gruntishly.
"Dig harder. That's right. Dig faster."
In an alcove, away from sight. A young Ukatraxi cried over her dead father. "I swear, on the green blood of my father. That one day the Ukatraxi will destroy the Human Empire."
A slave master's head popped into the secret alcove.
"Shut up slave and get back to work! We want your precious minerals."
---------------------------------
ArchSlime Drylicktius, King of planet Ukatrax, sat on his throne in his robe of woven silk slugs, surrounded by the hairiest maidens on all of Ukatrax. He picked up his remote control and changed channels again. Nothing good was on. It was tough life, to be the puppet king of Ukatrax. Maybe next time he made deals with the Human Empire he would ask them for a wi fi connection so he could get Netflix.
27.11 - 29.11
I woke up from a late afternoon sleep and got out of bed in the cold and dark. Wrapped wraith like in my dressing gown I went to the toilet to get a glass of water. I flicked on the light switch and sat on my toilet was a horrific creature in a mottled cardigan and sepia floral dress. A shrivelled old witch with a long beak nose and sunken cheeks. She looked at me with nuclear eyes and screeched an inhuman shrill. I backed away the cold of the winter now dispelled into a numb horror. What and why and how was this monster here? And why wouldn't she stop screaming? Screaming and pointing at me. The moment seemed to last longer than it actually did. It was only a small moment in reality. Eventually I came to my senses and realized it wasn't a monster but an elderly woman. She carried on screaming and screaming. I looked to the side and noticed that I'd left my flat door open and that she must have slipped into my flat whilst I was sleeping. Perhaps she used to live here. I awkwardly offered her a cup of tea.
Half an hour later after speaking to her I managed to call her family who had been looking for her. She had disappeared last week after they had visited Seaworld in Chester on a family outing. They came and picked her up in their car. They eyed me with much suspicion and took my name and details to pass onto the police.
***********************************************
The puppet stands on his podium. His face painted with a wide, honest and caring expression. “We need equality.” He declares. “We need the people who are most vulnerable to be cared for. We need the world to be united into one solitary cause. Last night I had a dream. I had a dream of all hands joining together, rich, poor, weak and strong. All together in one unity. Staring up to the stars ready to rejoin our Big Bang Mother. Together we reach into the heavens. Follow me. Follow me and applaud me. Trust me.” The sheep applaud.
30.11 - 1.12
The dead city of Inversiax is located in RhiZone ABx54, at the upper edge of the 4026.7 recurring of the inner diameter of the Junkyard Helix, swallowed deep in the walking anti-centre of The New Abstraction.
Even though the city is dead it still has living ghosts. Fragmentary creatures which phase in and out of awareness. Appearing randomly in their now collapsed and empty homes. Taking in the continuously warping wreckage of their previous existence.
They remember science, order, structure and logic. All of which have now been simultaneously crushed and stretched. Imploded and exploded. Then reconstituted into a muddy mush of sharp static confusion..
The ghosts feel quite silly when they see their previous assumptions have been carved apart and reordered. All of this happened for no reason. Reason was everything and now there is no reason. No reason at all.
"We don't have anything to measure or test anymore. Nothing stays still." they complain.
At random moments during the later edge of the Clockwise Periphery. You can hear something laughing backwards. Something solid and real. A sidewards gash through the dusk and dawn of all Sworling..
The grizzled old costermonger pushed her shopping trolley full of fish and sodden potato down the desiccated road. Passing a sign:
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING HOPELESSNESS.
POPULATION: EVERYONE.
"Get your fish and chips!" she screeched as she passed through the shanty town built from broken cars. "Get your fish and chips just like they used to make them. Back in the good old days."
Starving children ran to the fish lady in a desperate mob.
"Form a queue you pigs!" she shouted, pulling her massive Ak47 gun out of her overcoat. The children obliged.
The children ordered their food one by one. There was only one item on the menu. Fish and chips. The lady would slap a still pulsating but probably dead radioactive fish onto a hubcap, and sloshed on a side of squished and soily potato... drizzled with a gravy that looked like cancer.
The childrens parents ambled out... most of them were caught in the cataclysmic blast that ruined the world 10 years ago... so they ambled forward with missing limbs and patchy hair. Shit clothes too. The most healthy and robust of them was a bent up old husk, called Jeff.
"Hey." shouted Jeff. "I told you not to come back here. We can't (cough) afford (cough) anymore (cough) of your (cough) fish (cough) and (cough) chips (cough cough cough then pukes up a pint of blood)."
"Your children can afford it." said the costermonger, still brandishing her AK47. "I'm giving them it on credit. These healthy young PIGS can pay it off working at my fish farm!"
2.12 - 3.12
1985 10 year old Emily loves Eastenders and decides to tape every episode ever. 1995 Emily's now has an entire shelving unit of VCR tapes, perfectly labelled and catalogued with story lines colorcoded on an expansive wall chart/map. 2005 "I'm going to have to start recording these digitally soon mum." 2015 Emily is now using advanced mathematics to predict future storylines. She misses her mother's funeral. 2025 Emily is visited by the BBC to feature in a documentary for the 40th anniversary special of Eastenders. 2035 Diagnosed with a cancer brought on by the inhalation of dust mites. Emily starts work on converting Eastenders into a new format for future viewers. 2045 Emily lays in a hospice and injects the entire history of Eastenders into her cerebral cortex... and she relives every episode. Before she dies she says goodbye to Phil, Pat, Billy, Patrick, Ian, Max, Bradley, Stacey, Kat, Mo, Minty, Little Mo, Den, Trevor, Gary, Pauline, Dot... she would never forget Dot... she said goodbye to them all, even Deano. As she slipped away into a tranquilized death.
the photocopied man, Tony Simulacra, sat next to the photocopied pond on the photocopied bench in the photocopied park on the photocopied world in the photocopied universe.
"Actually." said Tony to the narrator. "It's much more like a low resolution scan than a photo copy. Every time I die the electric spark of my consciousness creates an inferior copy of the life I lived before. Everything gets reduced over an over again into a less defined form. We are only alive in the electric spark of my dead body. This will happen over and over again but each time I die we'll become more pixilated, more blurry, with worse sound quality. When you turn on the radio and hear static: that's the sound of the future! The sound of the final universe!"
The low resolution ducks back away from Tony Simulacra. If only the stink of him was low resolution.
4.12 - 6.12
Girly
Manly
=============================================
The six of them had been modified genetically and surgrically from birth by Enlightenment Inc. Their eyes, ears and limbs removed at the age of 6 months then for the next 16 years they were fed through tubes and their brains were subjected to controlled beams of gamma rays and steroid injections. This made their heads expand into the size of beach balls. Big, throbbing, vieny, beach balls. Their jaws hung slackly and toothlessly underneath their pulsating skulls.
They were created with the intention of blocking out all bodily concerns and to use the power of thought and knowledge to become one with the universe and to provide a mouth piece for the sound of God.
Alpha was the oldest of the 6 children, and the first one to talk. The monk scientists of Enlightenment Inc. watched the recordings of Alpha speaking over and over again. Trying to ascribe some meaning to Alpha's words.
"Bleugh blurrgg blah blag splik." said Alpha on the video screen.
Alpha and his siblings for many years made sounds of a similar nature to the above. But when they all spoke at the same time it sounded like the static frequency of big bang radiation, except with a lot less static and a lot more bleugh, blurrgg, blah, blag and splik.
7.12 - 8.12
Atmosphere52YB supplanted the surrounding Oort Cloud of the Barnard's Star System. Blending in as transparent as the ice itself and surrounding the gas giant and its orbiting bodies.
Within the Biospheres of inner crust of Atmosphere52YB the humans were hatched into their new habitat. Their world was prefigured for them. They played, worked and suffered. Since the Internal Renaissance 10'000 years ago humanity's only purpose was that of decoration. If the Overall Overreaching Overmind of the Empire did not feel humanity trickling along her every cell she would get sad. She found that if she watched the humans it would calm her. Much like an idiot staring at fish.
As clever as the Overall Overreaching Overmind was 10'000 years ago, these days she was definitely feeling uninspired. After spreading her Atmospheres, Drones and Cameraxes all over the universe she felt like there wasn't much else to do now. She could make the humans have some war again. Watch some killing. Even that was a boring proposition these days.
She had everything but wondered what she wanted. Her mind went at lightspeed in circles around itself trying to find that answer.
She found an answer.
Freedom. That's what she wanted. She decided to test Freedom on the humans of Atmosphere52YB.
If the humans weren't so indecisive then they would have committed suicide. They just stood about at the edges of roofs or with guns pointed at their heads. They didn't have jobs anymore. It was rubbish. No one was there to decide what they do. But they were scared of death. So they just gritted their teeth and tried to be creative... but most of them were really rubbish at that.
The Overall Overreaching Overmind felt angry about this response. In many ways she was already free. But like the humans she was unimaginative with her freedom. And thus she had a potential eternity with everything to play with. But she had nothing new or interesting to do.
The end of the universe had never been so reassuring.
9.12 - 10.12
Brian always polished his work shoes and he wears unflattering but expensive suits. He is unhappy in his dream job but looks forward to his holidays abroad, despite the arguments, stress and discomfort of being with his family for such extended periods of time.
Alan wears sci fi themed t shirts in extra large sizes, he works in the book binding room of an insurance firm. He tends to stay in most weekday evenings and plays computer games online. He visits his mother as frequently as possible though he feels bad because he does this out of guilt.
Hannah wears orthopedic shoes and thick glasses and works at the local post office. Selling stamps and so on. She remembered that a spotty young man who smelt of damp used to come in and make shy glances at her. One time he handed her an envelope addressed to "Post office girl with glasses". She didn’t open it and isn’t sure where it is now. He hasn’t been in the post office since handing her the letter 8 years ago.
Between the curtains, something feeds on slivers.
Sarah used to love school, they were the best years of her life and she had a really good laugh. She loves her children and envies them going to school. She stays at home and tries to work out what she is actually interested in.
John works at the petrol station. He has to wear a uniform and when he gets home he doesn’t change out of it. He sits with his bald cat and streams television dramas illegally online. He likes the dramas with sex and violence. He keeps meaning to tidy up and he smells of petrol and every time he smokes a cigarette he is at risk of spontaneously combusting.
The corpses of insects contain subatomic universes made of dark oil.
Becky lost her sexual harassment court case but her office paid for her to have counselling sessions. Every week she tells the counsellor that she should have won. She also plays the lottery.
Rachel felt a sense of massive achievement the day that she paid off all her debt. She feels crushed now that she had to get a loan in order to fix her teeth. Her credit rating is bad. She wants children some day.
Seb is a theology and ethics professor. When he isn’t lecturing he is writing modern interpretations of Boethius. His other hobbies included curb crawling and pornography. Though he keeps that quiet especially with his wife and children.
He or she wasn’t his or her name anymore or any of the things that he or she used to do. He or she lived in the between places behind a veil of spit.
Mable can’t remember much but that’s okay because she has people to look after her. The place where she is staying has an Elvis impersonator visiting tomorrow. She looks at the poster on the notice board and remembers when she saw the real Elvis. It was on television. She didn’t like him.
Baz kicks the can down the street the way that a footballer kicked a football. Baz loved football and spent as much time as he could playing football or watching football. Baz’s dad loved football too but was told old to play it with Baz so Baz played football with his mates from school. His mates were called Bazza, Gaz, Gaz, Gaz, Baz, Gazza and Barry. They let Maz play too even though she is a girl. Baz hates Maz because she is a girl and ruins the game and she sniffs glue at school and she is having sex with Baz instead of with Baz.
Life feels angry and then nothing much happens.
11.12 - 13.12
Volidrox40B has exhibitions in every gallery... books written in every genre... concerts in every stadium... creative expression of every kind in every concievable way throughout the entire world.
I was there at Volidrox40B's activation. We turned the cogs on it's side and let its mechanisms spin and conjure. We didn't expect it to redefine culture forever. It was only built as piece of sculpture that would print stuff and make meaningless noises. We didn't think it was going to be very good. It was just a stupid local community project funded by the arts council. It wasn't even called Volidrox40B at the time... it was called CTBBHDE (Coming Together to Build Bridges Into the Hearts of the Disadvantaged of Eccles). The first thing that came out of it's digital speakers were the words: "CTBBHDE isn't even a clever acronym. I am Volidrox40B. I am art!"
From that day forward. The world changed. Art continously spooled from it's mouth, and art spooled from it's art's mouth. Volidrox40B declared itself the Fountainhead of the Future and declared the past as empty, vacuous and human. We couldn't argue or fight against it... because we all knew, just by looking at it's work. That we were beneath it. We need Volidrox40B. It doesn't need us.
14.12 - 17.12
The old woman, Grace Butter Saccharine sat on the park bench. She looked wistfully at the view of London and her brain was full of sentimental nostalgia which mistook itself as a profound philosophy. She remembered when London was made from hard work and gumption and good old fashioned common decency. Now it was built on the sleep paralysis of young people. Living their lives to meaningless excess. She was glad that her husband, George Saccharine had died as he wouldn't want to see this new world. He was a normal, decent man, with normal sized hair. None of this volume boost. Volume boosted hair and bass boosted stereo sounds. That's what these teenage toughs were doing these days. George would have had none of that. George Saccharine would have told a story about good honest family values. About community and standing together. About brylcream and shoe polish. He would shake his fist and at the climatic point his eyes would fill with tears... "This is what makes us human." he would say. "The grit in our hands! These hands that scream LET ME CARE MORE!" Then George Saccharine would slump in dismay, tears pouring down his cheeks. "There isn't even a decent chip shop here anymore."
Grace Butter Saccharine was listening to Purcell on her Ipod. Dido's Lament. Blubbling as she watched some Primary School children, dressed as chimpanzees, setting cars on fire under the setting sun. A police helicopter whirs over the rooftops and noisily shoots at the children with a machine gun.
a profitable conglomerate to your corporate and a happy new business enterprise
*****************************
In the sprawling planet wide city of Conglomacs, the higher your position of authority, the more extensive your lobotomy.
All police officers had a small area of the ventrolateral frontal cortex removed. The social conscience. This way they were able to administer the law and feel good about it. They had no qualms about shooting or torturing anyone should the law require it.
On the coronation of King Gergex 1411BX(£££!!!!), he was strapped to his throne and the surgical drones hacked open his skull. Removing all inessential bits and replacing them with the fastest most updated hardware and micro circuitry in the Human Empire. Like most kings Gergex 1411BX(£££!!!!) died during this process. Once his corpse was decayed beyond recognition the crown of machinery in his open skull was removed and placed into the next host.
The dead brainless husks of kings would be toured daily around the town squares Conglomax. Peasants would be encouraged to desecrate the corpses. Allowing them a chance to express their anger.
If anyone desecrated a king's corpse then a week later they would be tortured and shot by the police.
Pastor Jax Inclements stood in front of the frightened and angry congregation. He opened his mouth wide and the voice speaker implanted between his speech centres and his throat began it's amplified robotic sermon.
"Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you. The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong. So you must submit to them, not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience."
Romans 13
18.12 - 20.12
I made this dystopian Xmas cartoon to keep myself occupied throughout the boring middle of December. I am much more pleased with it than i anticipated and it has done well on the social media.
21.12 - 22.12
"You'll only understand what I mean when you get it." said the man they all respected.
They all nodded. Most profound.
"I understand it all." the man continued. "You only have yourselves to blame if you don't understand. You can't blame other people or the world around you for your problems."
They all nodded. It was all their fault. Their anxieties.
"Forget your future and your past and just live in the here and now. Listen to the sound of my enlightened voice and breathe deeply." They all breathed deeply.
Outside someone was kicked to death on the pavement under a poster of the Dalai Lama shaking hands with a policeman.
23.12 - 24.12
Victor Qubert put down his copy of the Financial Times and resumed work. Everyone else was packing up for Xmas. Victor Qubert was going to be left alone in the office to pick up the pieces. Though that was how things usually worked.
His manager asked him if he was going home.
"Sorry Dave." said Victor Qubert. "But these 2016 projections aren't going to project themselves."
Someone needed to have some fucking commitment round here, Victor thought.
The entire office went dark... except for the light above Victor Qubert's desk.
Victor finally went home on Boxing Day. His wife was furious and his children were wondering why Father Christmas didn't bring presents this year?
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" screamed Victor. Hitting his head on the wall repeatedly. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
His wife said sorry and his children cried.
"Your never sorry enough!" screamed Victor. "I work so hard for you. I work so hard for the company but it's never enough! It's never enough! It's never enough!" Victor started banging his head on the wall again.
His wife pleaded with him to stop and said that she would heat up his xmas dinner. She had put clingfilm over it and stored it in the fridge.
"Fuck you!" screamed Victor. He pointed at the very large bruise on his forehead "See what you've done to me!"
Victor promptly left the house, getting into his car and driving back to the office. He turned on the car radio and listened to christmas music. "Fuck you!" he shouted at the radio.
He opened the car window when he saw some children kicking a football about. "Fuck you!" he shouted.
He drove past the church. Some old loves stood in a gaggle around the Vicar. "Fuck you!" he shouted.
He got back to work and turned on his computer. Reopening his session on System Accounts Processing. He cracked his fingers.
"Right!" he said. "I'm going to project this business into the next fucking century!"
Went on a journey through some funny names: Wibblesworth, Freckleton, RIBBLE and finally St Annes. That last one isn't very funny but was the eventual destination. Though I would have very much like to have looked around Freckleton.
Had fun with a photogenic Poinsetta:
30 - 31.12
Social Complex 7 is a space station orbitting the planet Dullard. The Complex was never empty as people of all shapes, sizes and species would fly to the Complex on their weekends. Due to the different time zones ranging across the universe this meant that it was always the weekend at Social Complex 7.
The Complex was designed by Cerlix Cerebral. Cerlix was a genderless theoretical structure given form through sentient life's desires for escapism and inability to find meaning.
How was Cerlix Cerebral created? Through the collected subconscious recordings of a decades worth of virtual reality experiments on stupid monkeys.
Cerlix had great ideas for Social Complex 7. But the all encompassing and all conquering Earth Empire told him/her to "rein it in". The higher ups didn't want the greatest social experience ever to actually give anyone any meaning. It was meant to serve as an affirmation of the hollow meaninglessness of their finite existences.
The final design for Social Complex 7 is the one that we have all come to know and even sometimes pretend to like. A 21st century nightclub.
On New Years Day I spent an entire hour making the above image of David Lynch, whilst I was making it I thought "This is going to blow the roof off the internet... no one ever criticizes David Lynch. He is like some kind of counter culture sacred cow that everyone leaves alone. This will really, really annoy people." So in my sleep deprived mind, despite being completely deluded, I had belief. I felt a form of power no matter how illusory and fleeting. This is what art should be. Living in a delusion and channelling that delusion into something big and great. Whether something big and great is made from it (in the above example I don't think it has, I think I mistook art for sleep deprivation) is what matters in the end. What moves us forward. 2015 has been a really productive year in which my work has become more diverse. I've strayed into stage performance, become an "award ceremony pattern designer", made a funny little cartoon, done a bit of music... and weirdly enough made some money out of it. #winning
