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.”
Category Archives: Writing
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?””
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”
Near desert…
Langsett remains weird. An intrusion of the outside. Dream-like, in that all our dreams are breached by that which shouldn’t be there. Nor should I… be here, ‘down there’. I’m lost. That horizon line that greats you as you ascend the first set of hills, with its weirdly rhythmical monotony, calls you forward… Yet itContinue reading “Near desert…”
Only in absence
During the course of my life I’ve realised that I can only reach out and embrace something’s presence/my presence in its total absence. An inability to be at ease with the living, to do what the living do, as led me to be a living ghost, who in turn chases other ghosts. I’ve developed aContinue reading “Only in absence”
Living with self-hatred: 2024
The fact that I feel pressed to make disclaimers about what I do or don’t say on my own blog already reveals the presence of a dominant inner critic. It thinks it is protecting me from damaging any reputation I may give off for having artistic ‘professionalism’. And indeed I feel I must impress theContinue reading “Living with self-hatred: 2024”
Turning 40 (a list of things I’m most proud about from the last 20 years)
I’m 40 years old in roughly 20 days. When it comes to a life lived through formalities, and rites of passage, there has been no life to speak of. Forgive me if this sounds like wallowing, it’s because Xmas time is really genuinely hard at the best of times. Seeing photos of couples, or familiesContinue reading “Turning 40 (a list of things I’m most proud about from the last 20 years)”
Edging out to the vanishing point
The late John Berger suggested that the body of work of an artist could only be completed by death. When talking about the 20th century artist Giacometti he suggested the artist’s ” …act of looking was like a form of prayer …a way of approaching but never being able to grasp an absolute”. Giacometti’s sculptures,Continue reading “Edging out to the vanishing point”
John B Ledger 