If everything up here is exposed, then this bleached landscape is the necessary negative of the urban spaces below where addiction has become the modus operandi; where every stone is upturned, leaving no secrets, no mystery, no object to desire, just short circuits to quick fixes. …and it’s for good reason I come here, onceContinue reading “The waste that calls your name”
Author Archives: John B Ledger
The mistaken belief that pain will end: Blur’s ’13’, 25 years on
To speak with admiration of Blur still stokes fear of criticism, even to this day. I’ve read enough critiques of their class tourism in the 90s; the ease with which they simultaneously pantomimed the working class whilst being socialites in the Camden scene to make me feel like the only culture I’m allowed to talkContinue reading “The mistaken belief that pain will end: Blur’s ’13’, 25 years on”
Re-reading Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s ‘cognitarian subjectivation’ 13 years later.
Around the time of all the stuff kicking off in 2011, the student protests, the English Riots and the Occupy movement, a friend, noticing that I was projecting slightly more nervous energy than usual, suggested an article by a writer I’d never heard of. I’d only started reading in my mid 20s. After the financialContinue reading “Re-reading Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s ‘cognitarian subjectivation’ 13 years later.”
The ascent (Black Hill)
Where do you go when the direction, momentum, you indirectly, but nonetheless wholeheartedly placed your future state of being within, dissolves into thin air, and you see nothing in front of you? You go sideways. Westwards. Up here…scouring for answers. The moors are plural. One moor is every moor. But the Moors is a stateContinue reading “The ascent (Black Hill)”
“When we awoke it was spring”
The above line is taken from the film ‘London’ by Patrick Keiller. Spring means more to me than I realise, if I’m foolish enough to let it slip me by. I see it specifically in the former mining areas of South and West Yorkshire, the rolling fields that still separate the sporadic built-up areas, alwaysContinue reading ““When we awoke it was spring””
Historicide/”Who made the monster?”
I admit this new drawing isn’t a cause for personal celebration. It’s a completion of a series of works spanning the last few years, that I wish to see the end of now, begging for a closure of a wound through which the works have spoken. I once thought this was just self-dislike, but it’sContinue reading “Historicide/”Who made the monster?””
Live discussion on @snikt_a_gram this Thursday
This coming Thursday I’ve been invited to chat with Johnny Foxx on his @snikt_a_gram channel in a live video cast. It will be broadcast live on Instagram at 7pm. Never done a live interview before, so if there’s any express plastic surgeons out there, let me know! Cheers.
YSP: a requiem for a dream
Yorkshire Sculpture Park: the citizen’s park that never was The following views are about an insider, albeit of no particular significance to the organisation, who wasn’t disgruntled, but who lamented and mused from the gallery benches over what this place could have been. I spoke recently to a friend about how travelling by a cityContinue reading “YSP: a requiem for a dream”
Digging Deep – 40 years on since the Miners’ Strike’
Next Saturday I’ll be exhibiting new, old and re-imagined work for the exhibition ‘Digging Deep – 40 years on since the Miners Strike’, which will be held at @artbombuk , Unitarian, 60 Hallgate, Doncaster. Opening event, Saturday 2nd March 1 – 6 PM, exhibition till 21st April 2024. Art, Conversation, Music, Film. A special eventContinue reading “Digging Deep – 40 years on since the Miners’ Strike’”
The Mental Health Strike ’24
On 6 March 2024 the world’s first Mental Health Strike brought normal life to a near-total stand-still. One after another, people from many walks of life bridged the deep social divides, by publicly declaring that they could no longer maintain good mental health under contemporary work/life conditions. The Mental Health Strike initially began as aContinue reading “The Mental Health Strike ’24”
John B Ledger 