This week is gearing up to the opening of the Hirschhorn exhibition on Thursday at Fabrica, Brighton 6-9pm and also the whole launch of the Brighton Photo Biennial. It will be good to see The Incommensurable Banner at last. I feel I know it so well yet haven't actually seen it live yet.
Started teaching back at the university this week. It is very heartening to find such enthusiasm amongst my students about the White Night debate 'Make Love Not War' that will be happening on 25 October in the University of Brighton gallery 9-10pm. At least a few of them already are keen to get involved. I would like the whole event to be theirs really. For them to ask the question what does that phrase 'Make Love Not War' mean to them now? I'm reading Mark Kurlansky's book about 1968 to find out more about student activism in the 60s and 70s.
Altogether the times feel particularly volatile. People are starting to give voice to their resentment that they might have to pick up the tab for the mistakes arising from unregulated banking maneouvres.
In trying to engage with what was my rather mouldering political consciousness I often feel like a phoney. In this whole process I tend to monitor the feelings which arise as if they were a weather vane for more generalised situations. Being 'political' or appealing to a 'political consciousness' from the comfort of one's own circumstances can seem a bit like a cheap trick: an easy option compared to the myriad ambiguities of art. But I don't think it is a particularly 'easy' approach, riddled as it is with all the complexities of interest, desire and history.
I had a dental check up this morning at a dental practice I've not been to before. It is nearer to my new home. At the end of the check-up (one small cavity otherwise all well) I asked my new dentist how transferring dentists works and whether I would need to arrange to have my dental records from my previous dentist sent to this practice. He looked at me with such a look of bewilderment and annoyance on his face. I might as well have asked him to relate his earliest childhood memory to me. No, he explained, we can just work with what we've seen today.
I left pondering the consequences of working without reference to history.
