First off I’ll start with a bit of good news; the exhibition I felt I had to cancel at the beginning of the year, is now back on, and scheduled for the coming months (I will post exact date).
I tend to throw the kitchen sink (metaphorically speaking) at exhibitions. This is because even though my art is my life, and the post-production is a mere tip of the ice berg of the planning I put in, it just does not resemble a ‘practice’, nor does my concerns resemble ‘research’. I call it ‘my art’, because to call at practice would confuse the word ‘dedication’ with ‘professional approach’.
For a start, I make no bones about being somebody who lives with, and makes through, mental health struggles. ‘Mental health’, and any specifications of ‘mental health’ are not a ‘field of research’; my work is a ‘lived in’ work. And I’m sorry if your response is “well, aren’t all artists doing this?” well, it doesn’t feel like it.
I didn’t choose to be an artist. It chose me. Because I couldn’t find anyway of being, of manifesting into adulthood, the normal rites of passage seemed cut off and alien. And as I began to struggle with eating disorders and other anxieties provoked by a extreme wish to negate a world I couldn’t find a footing in, art gave me another option; a third way, almost.
Art became the way I recognised and valued myself, it became the crutch upon which I would try and fail to make myself appear romantically appealing. It was the shield I violently defended myself with when the world came knocking, asking what the hell I was doing with my life.
What it has never been is a positive projection of what I want to be. It was, and still is, a ‘fuck you’ to a world that I increasingly began to feel criticised by as I reached my 30s, and still couldn’t provide an answer to, when a suggestion to do something became the growl of “don’t just stand there! do something!”.
It’s not a practice, and it isn’t flexible. It’s a protest, yes, and sometimes this can align with the larger social political critiques that I almost nearly always agree with, but it goes little further.
It’s a problem. Serious one to be honest. The problem’s core began to unearth itself a few years back, when I finally realised why an intentionally warmed utterance “just be yourself!” grated on me to the point that it if an associate said it to me, it would burn me for days/weeks after.
And that’s because I have no self that I can identify. All I can identify is voices mimicking others; be it caring family members, friends or potential social media trollers. They are always critical, but they have gotten louder over the past few years, as I reach middle age, and as an ability to ‘change’ has become a harder task. suggestions like ‘changing’, ‘taking responsibility’ or ‘doing something that makes you feel better’ even, are hard suggestions to take on, because it never feels like it’s coming from any sense of personal volition, more than a inner critic, who’s telling you off.
Prior to first cancelling the aforementioned exhibition, they had hit their worst point. And at their worst, they help create such a bad picture of myself, that I start to act out that picture. And that’s when things crash to a full stop. When the destructiveness starts to severe trust and friendship there’s a serious problem.
It must be added here, that what I’m describing is far more like a inner monologue in a state of panic, rather than schizophrenia; the latter being a type of psychosis. Which this isn’t.
But I wanted to share my video work, that I began working on this time last year, during the ending month of the second full lockdown. It was a fucking exhausting process, as often, the more you pick up on the inner monologue’s content, the more it can hence forth make itself audible all the time. But I think it’s one of my best works.
Thanks
John
John B Ledger 