Punctured bicycle on a hillside desolate

This is my latest entry in an Art Project called ‘The Turbulence Closet’, inspired by the film The Proposition.

D.I.Y. I.T.

 

I has a MacBook (sort of…..not really)

Hope not Hate

So it wasn’t just a horrible dream then. I’m at a loss for words really to describe how I feel. Yes, having 2 members from a Fascist party represent us in Europe is bad enough. It’s embarrassing and a damning indictment on the state of voter apathy in this country. Make no mistakes, the BNP didn’t get those seats through a massive surge in popularity. They gained them simply because people in Yorkshire and the North West couldn’t be bothered to go out and vote. The margins were frustratingly close, and in some cases a few thousand more votes and the Greens would have gained. But we have what we have. A few entries ago I half jokingly said that I’d hold anyone solely responsible for the BNP gaining seats if they didn’t go out and vote. Even if you don’t live in the North West but still didn’t vote, I think you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.

I’ll say one thing about the BNP, at least their supporters can be bothered to get of their arses and vote.

But yes, having two members from a Fascist party represent us in Europe is bad enough. What’s far, far more of a concern to me is the landslide victories for both the Tories and UKIP. As many problems as I have with the SNP’s popularity here in Scotland, we at least remember the terrible mess the Tories made of this country. We gave Labour a chance, who again messed up, so now we have the SNP in power. What scares me is that people in England appear to have very short memories. Britain was a horrible, horrible place under Thatcher and Major. They see the Tories as a viable alternative, a party who have aligned themselves in the EU with far-right parties from Poland and the Czech Republic who are openly homophobic, climate change deniers……….and don’t even get me started on UKIP, who are basically the BNP for nice, middle class people. Their immigration policies are appalling (shutting the door for five years basically and dealing with any undesirables), and I despair at a party who has a leader in Nigel Farage who expresses admiration for Enoch Powell. Incredibly saddened, ashamed and disgusted to be British right now.

Suddenly this country seems like a colder, darker and scarier place to live.

LDN 05/09 part 2 (Thursday)

Come Thursday morning and we thought we’d give breakfast a go, which turned out not to be the best of ideas. It’s the first time I’ve had both soggy and chewy toast. If I had the time, I could have fashioned a piece into a pretty respectable bouncy ball. I shouldn’t complain too much though as this place wasn’t the Ritz. In fact, it had more the look of a Soviet era prison camp about it, even it’s central courtyard resembled some kind of dingy exercise yard. But it was a warm, safe bed for a few nights and that’s all we really needed.

Fed and watered, we had the rough idea of heading to the Tate Modern, so off we headed in the general direction of Victoria Embankment.

(probably the best picture of the week)

(we look especially badass in this one)

(I’m incapable of smiling like a normal person I’m afraid)

(not resembling tourists in anyway)

(one of my favourites)

(various heads)

(zombie)

(Wilfred, the party boat)

Waving as we crossed the Thames makes us look like a gang of poncey neo-Nazis. Oh well :p. We decided to check out the Annette Messager exhibition at the Hayward Gallery since we found ourselves on the Southbank. Wow, what can I say? We all loved it and were pretty much blown away by what we saw. I’d never heard of her or her work before, which is very dark and autobiographical and mainly large installation pieces, but I came away feeling really inspired. Here’s a little about the show from the Hayward Gallery website:

Annette Messager (born in 1943, lives and works in Paris) is widely regarded as one of Europe’s most important contemporary artists. The retrospective Annette Messager: The Messengers, presents an overview of the artist’s career and reveals her use of an astonishing and affecting repertoire of forms and materials (among them soft toys, stuffed animals, fabrics, wool, photographs and drawings). Mixing aesthetic registers and playing with remarkable virtuosity on our senses and feelings, this exhibition presents a panoramic survey from the intimate and conceptually driven pieces Messager made in the early 1970s to the very large sculptural installations of the past 15 years, in which movement plays an increasingly important role.

Two pieces really stood out for me, the first being an huge installation of over-sized, fabric human organs whch had an almost cartoonish, cutesy feel to them. They wer eall connected to a computer controlled air supply and would inflate and deflate at random, and it really became quite unsettling. Watching these things ‘breathe’ and come to life, added with the droning noise of the air really hypnotized me and I was stood there for a good 5 minutes. The second was probably my favourite and was a huge sheet of fabric laid out on the floor in a large, darkened room. Under the fabric were various handmade objects that I couldn’t really make out, but they were illuminated and glowed through the red fabric as it ebbed and flowed from another air supply. Towards the rear of the room there was a small opening like a door were the fabric spread out from and where the air supply was at it’s strongest, making the fabric move more violently. Because it was so dark, shapes through this door became obscured and again made for quite an unsettling experience. You could see movement but you couldn’t quite make it out. The gentle flow of the giant fabric sheet began to lull me into this weird kind of state. I was just sat there not really aware of the paasage of time. It was brilliant.

Back out into the gorgeous London sunshine, we walked along the Southbank towards the Tate Modern, grabbing something to eat along the way.

(another favourite )

(I think my legs are what makes this picture)

LDN 05/09 part 1 (Wednesday)

Various Political and Social news events have left me feeling pretty disillusioned and disconnected from the world we find ourselves in. But I think I’ll save all of that horrible stuff for another day as writing about it will just make me feel worse. Instead, I thought I’d share with you my Trip to London through the Art School last month. Mainly because it’s been due for ages, but also because it was one of the best weeks of my life, and looking back on the photographs and those amazing memories makes me smile. I’ve collected together pictures from everyone here to give you an idea of what we got up to.

Well, the beginning seems like a perfectly reasonable place to start :p We were all due to journey down with the coach from Dundee, which although probably would have been a good laugh, I’m afraid the idea of 10 hours on a Coach to London sounded like my idea of hell, so being the luxurious bastard that I am, I opted to catch a train from Edinburgh. I did have to get there first on the dreaded Megabus, which I had just accepted as probably going to be a rubbish journey, but it was an absolutely gorgeous day and I had the best bus driver ever. Seriously, he smiled, was helpful and informed us that we would be taking the slightly longer but scenic route to drink in the lovely weather, so we should just ‘’sit back and enjoy the views!” What a man.

From Edinburgh to London my journey was pretty non-eventful, being that as I was on my own with my i-pod. One major highlight being the discovery of the Mondo Movie podcast over at http://www.mondomovie.com/  If you’re a fan of anything from extreme Asian cinema, classic 80’s horror, over the top gore or trashy exploitation movies, swing by and check it out. Well, since my journey pretty much consisted of listening to that, here’s how the rest of the gang got on with the Coach.

(the first of many gunshows)

Visually, a tad more exciting than hearing about me banging on about listening to a podcast while sat beside a Spanish woman. Although……..

I pulled in to the Big Smoke at about 6 and made my way to the Hotel, and was highly amused to be passed by all four coaches, which made for lots of waves. It was like when you’re on a school trip when you’re about 10 and you see a dog or something. Everyone goes mad and is just glued to the windows. Anyway, after meeting up with everyone, finding our rooms (which would soon prove to be rather difficult, but more on that later) we headed out to grab something to eat in Chinatown. This proved somewhat awkward as, out of politeness, I invited along Rory who I was rooming with. Now you should know that Rory is an interesting character. Bless him, he’s got a heart of gold but he has the social skills of wooden table. If you were to imagine a stereotypical geek, he’s your man. Awkward, clumsy and slightly naive. It did prove somewhat frustrating as I began to feel like his mother as the night wore on, always checking how he was and trying to involve him in everything. To be fair, he is from Orkney and this was his first time in London and he was thrust into Chinatown with a bunch pierced freaks, lesbians and weirdos with mad hair. To sum it up. no one was entirely comfortable with the situation, but I couldn’t just leave him in the hotel room so we made do. After much wandering around and lots of Gunshow posing, we devoured some noodles, averted a mild tantrum and made our way back to the hotel were I left Rory to retire for the evening while some of us fell into hazy stupor of alcohol and exhaustion. All in all, what a start to the trip!

(Rory Although he is sitting next to Miriam, who is a force of nature to say the least, so I can’t really blame him. Bless him though.)

(cheeky feel)

(random child)

I’ll be updating lots more over the weekend, so stay tuned loves.

Jackie Collins Existential Question Time

Well, that’s all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed for submission into second year. We had out last ‘official’ day today and it’s all a little bit sad. But I can’t wait for the London trip next week, our Summer project over the holidays and finally getting my teeth into second year. Myself, Kirsty, Vicki and Emily all went out for something to eat afterwards with the hope of spending the day in the park drinking in the sun…..but this is Dundee and it started raining, so we went back to Vicki’s to watch some DVDs. The Proposition, A really gritty and brutal depiction of life in the Australian Outback of the 1880’s. Written by Nick Cave (!) and staring Ray Winstone and Guy Pearce, it’s a pretty difficult watch (in terms of violence and the oppressive atmosphere and heat) but well worth checking out. We followed that with lasagne and one of my all time favourites, Eagle vs. Shark…..

 

After all that, we got down to some serious work and planned out the first project for our ‘collective’ (the name’s still up in the air at the moment). It involves breaking into ‘entering’ a disussed mental hospital on the outskirts of the City. Should be fun : )

 

 

”Oh Mommy what’s a sex pistol?”

Just like your dad, you’ll never learn

 

 

 As hinted at a few entries ago, here’s my most recent piece of work. It’s my first entry in a collaboration project with my friend Rhian called the Turbulence Closet. This entry is all about me getting extremely pissed off at the actions of the Sunday Express journalist Paula Murray who wrote a pretty disgusting story involving the Survivors of the Dunblane Massacre a few months ago. I’m sure most of you are more than aware of what happened on that day back in March, but for some of my international readers I’ll give you a brief rundown.

On the morning of March 13th a man called Thomas Hamilton walked into the local primary school in Dunblane here in Scotland and opened fire during a gym class. He killed 17 people; the teacher over seeing the class and 16 children, all aged between 5 and 6 years old, after which he killed himself. I can’t really put the sheer, visceral brutality of that event into words. I was 11 when it happened and I remember it well. It was the first huge news story that I remember sticking in my mind, an event that I was old enough to understand the implications off. It cut deep to the bone through out Scotland because we’ve always had this attitude that the bad things don’t really happen here, especially in a sleepy little town like Dunblane. Murderers and Terrorist are only interested in the big Cities down south. That fairytale was shattered on that morning though.

Ever since then, there has been a strict policy on not naming the survivors of the massacre in the media. There was the feeling that we shouldn’t let that even shape their lives. As toddlers, they still had everything ahead of them. If they achieved success in life, they would do it on their own terms and not through some idealised notion of ‘fighting through the pain’ of that horrible day. Conversely, if they happened to go off the rails, like countless of us have growing up, they would escape the public scrutiny and accusations that would inevitably follow.

But Paula Murray took that anonymity away. She not only named several of the survivors, but she out right accused them of ’shaming the memory’ of those died. Now, what horrible things must they have done to deserve that? Well, our dear Paula befriended a ‘Dunblane group’ on the social networking site Bebo (incidentally biding her time until those involved turned 18….classy move that) Through this group the members posted pictures of themselves on nights out, having fun, getting drunk and generally doing what teenagers do. And so there we have it. The grossly offensive act these individuals performed to shame the memory of their murdered classmates was basically living…….a normal life.The fact Murray would plumb such depths for a story and to twist it in such a way really sickened me and a lot of other people too. There was a big outcry through various blogs on the web and a distinct line between new and old media seems to be emerging. The Express realised an extremely weak and bullish ‘apology’ that far from addressed the ill feeling.

We should always be wary and sceptical towards what the media feeds us. In the past they’ve had a reckless attitude towards their public, the abhorrent actions of Kelvin MacKenzie and The Sun in the aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster come to mind. But my views on old media vs. web 2.0 are for another day. I hope you like my first entry and if you feel strongly about it, do some research on the incident yourself and take action.

Throw those curtains wide

”I realised on Friday that I’ve had the best year of my life. Sitting in the Art Bar at the end of the day with three of the most wonderful friends I could ever ask for. This Art School malarkey has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I wrote the above on the evening of my last day of first year at Art School. I’ve posted it here because I want it to act as a reminder. Since that day I’ve become a bit disheartened with the whole idea of this blog. Spending the last week trying to have intelligent discussions with Creationists, Religious Zealots and Conspiracy Theorists has really knocked the fight out of me. What’s the point? They don’t want to listen and I end up getting extremely frustrated and depressed. I feel like I’ve been putting so much time and effort into expressing my beliefs (or lack there of) in this medium, but I feel like no one is listening. So, I asked myself, what really is the point?

But I realised that trying to change peoples minds isn’t the ultimate goal. That is never the end goal. The whole point of doing something like this is to make your stand, no matter how small or insignificant. You have to keep fighting because we’ll never beat these people, but we’ll certainly make their lives and their ability to propagate ignorance just that little bit harder. I can’t give up.

The past 12 months have been the bes tof my life and I want this entry to stand as a reminder for that whenever I feel like I’m beat. Because no one can beat me after that : )

 

I’ll leave you with this very special video as life seems just that little bit after after these 10 minutes. Enjoy.

Me, a sceptic? I hope you have proof.

The aim of this blog is to share with you my passion for Art and Scepticism.  Now these subjects aren’t the easiest to combine to produce something engaging and interesting, but it’s an ongoing process for me and I’ve had a blast producing such work over the past year. This is probably the one that I think works best. All the elements fell into place and the medium of using a book to present the work was perfect.

Our brief centred around the word ‘belonging’ and what it meant to us.  I struggled to begin with because I didn’t really feel I belonged to anything in particular. But I am always an advocate for science and scepticism, and that seemed like a cool, and honest angle to work from. After a lot of research, I began to think back to the 12 year old me who was absolutely obsessed with everything paranormal. Ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, you name it, and it hit me how equally passionate I was back then towards the complete opposite of what I’m into now. Artistically, it seemed like a far more interesting road to take this project down, so I ended up combining these two worlds and presenting them in a little Artist’s book. Two separate worlds  that at differing times in my life I truly felt like I belonged to. The end result is a little rough around the edges and I think I’d like to expand on it and maybe end up having it professionally bound. I had the best time making it and I hope you like it.

‘Bigfoot’, as seen in the famous Patterson-Gimlin film. This was always an image that scared the bejesus out of me when I was little.

Voyager 1 is now the farthest man-made object from earth and is well on it’s way to reaching interstellar space. Which is rather awesome.

I wondered how the hell I was going to portray ghosts, but I found these amazing Victorian ghost photographs which were all the rage back then. Obviously absurd, but they do have this very creepy quality to them, and I love the guy’s reaction in the bottom left picture…’ZOMG! GHOST!!11!”

20th July 1969. Man sets foot on the Moon….’nuff said.

Earth vs The Flying Saucers!

In 1990, Voyager 1 took a photograph of Earth that showed it as no more than a few pixels from it’s vantage point at the edge of the solar system. The Scientist and Astronomer Carl Sagan had pushed for the photograph to be taken, having in mind the magnitude of seeing such an image of our home planet. Carl is one of my all time heroes, his love and enthusiasm for science is a continued inspiration. The above is an extract from his book, The Pale Blue Dot, which you can hear him reading in this truly life-affirming clip…… it never fails to make me smile. (plus, it has a Mogwai song playing in the background….don’t say I’m not good to you!)

He is risen! (part 2)

Next on the hit list is Nicky Gumbel. Now, many of you may not have heard of him before, but he’s the developer and leader of the controversial Alpha Course, a series of classes and talks aimed at converting people to evangelical Christianity which just so happen to have a worldwide following and attendance. Nicky is a vicar at the Holy Trinity Brompton Church in central London, and to give him his dues, he’s a fairly engaging and charismatic speaker. But charisma can be a dangerous thing.

I’ve always been extremely sceptical of the Alpha Course and it’s methods., which border on brainwashing in their execution. It’s main prerogative seems to be conversion rather than discussion and it rather cynically prays on vulnerable people to achieve those goals. Case and point, when attending the course, at the half way mark members are invited to attend a day long or weekend getaway. This is the most controversial aspect of the course in my eyes as the main topic is the Holy Spirit, with the weekend getaway used as an opportunity to let the Holy Spirit enter your body, resulting in Glossolalia or speaking in tongues. Now we can all agree that even amongst other branches of Christianity, speaking in tongues is viewed with a very critical, suspicious and down right mocking eye, and rightly so. But it’s the act of taking it’s members away together, out of familiar surroundings that I have real problems with. It reeks of cult like behaviour, and having witnessed this particular part of the alpha course on a televised introduction a few years ago, I can see why.

You get a group of suggestible and vulnerable people together in one place then you can achieve a lot. People begin to speak in tongues and at first you feel awkward. It sounds insane and must look even worse; people lolling their heads back and spouting nonsense. More and more people join in. You feel even more awkward. But you don’t want to look like a failure. You don’t want to let the course leaders down. The noise levels increase and a sense of hysteria builds. The pressure is immense. Mob rule takes over and you join in. After all, no one wants to feel left out. I had to rely on second hand accounts from the course participants (some positive, quite a few concerned and confused at what had happened) because the good Mr. Gumbel would rather the actual event wasn’t filmed……funny that, isn’t it?

But, that’s by and by. The main subject of this entry is Mr. Gumbel’s views on homosexuality. It should come as no surprise that he isn’t the most liberal of supporters (what member of an archaic, abrahamic religion is!?) but I do feel the need to point out how fucking ridiculous he is being. What follows is an extract from a Guardian article by the journalist Jon Ronson, documenting his time with the Alpha course:

  “I was talking to a homosexual friend,” says Tony, “and he said that ever since he was a child he found himself attracted to other boys. So why does the church think he’s committing a sin? Are you going to Hell if you commit a sexual act that is completely normal to you? That seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?” 

There is a murmur of agreement from the group.

“First of all,” says Nicky, “I have many wonderful homosexual friends. There’s even an Alpha for gays running in Beverly Hills! Really! I think it’s marvellous! But if a paedophile said, ‘Ever since I was a child I found myself attracted to children’, we wouldn’t say that that was normal, would we?”

A small gasp.

“Now, I am not for a moment comparing homosexuals with paedophiles, but the Bible makes it very clear that sex outside marriage, including homosexual sex, is, unfortunately, a sin.”

He says he wishes it wasn’t so, but the Bible makes it clear that gay people need to be healed.

“Although I strongly advise you not to say the word ‘healed’ to them,” he quickly adds. “They hate that word.”

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/21/weekend7.weekend

Nicky, Nicky, Nicky! Where do I start!? To be fair, let me jump to your defence. I mean, those whiny Gays and their ‘feelings’, blowing everything out of proportion at the prospect of getting healed. God, lighten up you homos! The bible makes it pretty clear! No butt sex for you!!!

Now, if that wasn’t vile enough, we have a real humdinger up next:

”But if a paedophile said, ‘Ever since I was a child I found myself attracted to children’, we wouldn’t say that that was normal, would we? Now, I am not for a moment comparing homosexuals with paedophiles…..’’ actually Nicky, that’s EXACTLY what you are doing. What this shows is just how grossly ignorant, ill-informed and offensive Nicky Gumbel is. On the one hand, we have the act of having sex with someone who is under the age of consent…WHICH IS ILLEGAL. On the other, we have the act of two consenting adults having sex with each other, which, as far as I’m aware, IS LEGAL here in the real world.

Fuck Nicky Gumbel and the bullshit he spouts. Ok, he sugar coats his bigotry with the cloak of ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin!’ but that makes it all the more insidious in my eyes. His book, Searching Issues is full of outrageous lies and dangerous hyperbole on the subject of homosexuality.

“He [God] did not design our bodies for homosexual intercourse.”

Actually, stimulation of the male prostate can be extremely pleasurable and itself is essential for ejaculation. It’s no accident that it’s referred to as the male ‘G-spot’. You want to give it a bash Nicky, you never know, you may enjoy having your prostate examined. And you don’t have to jump straight in and shove a cock up there, a finger will do for now : ) (although I imagine the giant stick you have rammed up there must be doing a pretty good job.)

‘’There is a great deal of evidence that homosexual orientation is something that is acquired or learned.’’

No. Just no. It’s not, never has been and never will be A FUCKING CHOICE.

Not only does the text condemn homosexuals, it also condemns those who “not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practise them”.

That’ll be me and pretty much every other freethinking, rational and right-minded individual on the planet. Fuck me, heaven’s going to be pretty empty at this rate. Jesus, Nicky and some really uptight Christians. Sound like an eternal paradise to me.

Faith is a powerful and wonderful thing. But this isn’t Faith. This is a rotten, cult of personality at work. It’s the view and idea of Jesus, through the spiritual conduit of Nicky Gumbel. If you are looking for Him, find God on your own terms, not through this abhorrent arsehole.

This isn’t an attack on faith or those who have it. This is an attack on inequality. We can’t sit quietly and let things like this happen just because it’s part of someone’s religious beliefs, especially when they try inflicting their outdated and embarrassing views on the rest of us through laws and legislations. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the mind of someone who accepts these views as part of their faith. Someone who, outwardly has no malice towards gay people, but who will condemn them all the same because their big, scary god says so in some ancient text (this is 2009, right?) I don’t for one millisecond give a shit as to what your god thinks, why can’t you use your own critical thinking skills and realise how obscene your views are?

Equality. It’s a basic right. I pity those who deny it in others. Today’s events regarding Amazon show us that it’s still a spectre that looms in the background. There is no secret agenda* at work. No evil, secular movement trying to corrupt you. When you peel away all the layers, this is about love. And anyone who judges someone by who they fall in love with is a very small person indeed.

*(Although there is an idiot agenda at work and it goes by the name of the National Organisation for Marriage……or NOM. You can view the good work they do here):

I do love how they are called NOM, as it makes me think of NOM NOM NOM and the always entertaining LOLCATS. So what better way to leave you then with one of their perals of wisdom………..I CAN HAS GAISEX?