Perhaps you have read the last three essays about my multi-faceted career.
I know it is a tale of abuse and survival. The reason I have written about these shifts in my work is that in this age there is an ever greater need for artists to contribute to the discussions about where we are, where we may go, who stands in the path of evolving humanity and how artists need to respond.
Part of this survival is recognising how fearful the establishment is of truth and beauty and why they will continue to organise artists around fame and fortune rather than around making meaning.
My story is one of continual assault and resistance. Journalists as Carole Cadwalladr, novelists as Elif Shafak and painters as Ricky Romain all bear witness to their struggles with truth-telling.
What I have done across my life is attempt to reveal the invisible controls which exist behind the walls of our highly controlled educations, our superficial pop culture, our continually misleading 24/7 news and the endless evasions of politicians and priests.
But, as the horrors of Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and all the other armed conflicts continue to destroy infrastructure and innocent people’s lives, it is clear to me that my looking at society through the lenses of politics, culture and economics has been futile.
I ask myself, ‘what other species allows a small number of their own species to destroy their habitat wilfully?’ ‘What other species systematically destroys innocent bystanders as they, the already bloated billionaires pursue greater power, wealth and fame?
I have decided to look at how I have been presenting the outer objective world and my own inner being. I’m experimenting with how I transform so-called external realities into metaphor, to perhaps introduce more metaphoric signs into how I represent the world. Early days…but I have tried to introduce young artists into what is a struggle unless they subsume themselves in the entertainment and decorations of the rich, unless they conform to the ‘acceptable subject matter and stories.
We are hoping to release these first three films of 12
and our 200 page Manual in the last week of May…
