Like and Share if You agree!

Our women, children and old folk are dying. John Keane, 2004.

Whilst researching artist John Keane for my dissertation, I was lucky enough to be able to interview him. I asked him to talk about his process. I already knew that he worked from manipulated media images to make his paintings… I had done the same.

I was interested to to learn, that he used screen grabs from online videos to work from. I decided that this was an idea that could also be beneficial to my work. I played through some YouTube videos that are relevant to the work that I’m making and used the screenshot feature on my iPad, to take images from parts of the video that interested me. I discovered that by doing so, that there’s an element of chance as to how the image is taken. For example, if a person is moving or speaking, they maybe captured with their eyes closed or in mid speech. I feel that this gives the image a sense of a moment being pulled out of time, as opposed to a staged or orchestrated photograph. It has an element of spontaneity and originality, especially as each shot always seems to be that little bit different and even sometimes blurred.

In my dissertation, I talked about the timeless nature of war and the subsequent misery that goes along with it. Using Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ and the more recent work of War artist John Keane, to illustrate these recurring themes at different points in time.

Doing this made me consider the conflicts that the U.K. are currently involved in and the negative impact that it’s having on society here in the U.K. More specifically, the way that people exploit these circumstances to create a rift between certain sections of society, to perpetuate their own ideologies or agendas.

It never fails to shock me, the lack of compassion that can be directed at humans, by other humans, when they feel that their hatred is justified. Social media has given me a worrying insight into the way that ordinary people can direct hatred at others, whom they (rightly or wrongly) feel threatened by.

Scrolling through Facebook, I happened to read an article that had been shared from a right wing group’s Facebook page. The gist of the story was that school exam dates may be changed to accommodate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The image that accompanied the article, was of a group of Muslim kids, standing outside a school.
The fact that this story had been used by the group, to perpetuate their agenda, didn’t shock me and it didn’t really surprise me that there would be some kind of debate about it. What did shock me, was the language used by most of the 1000+ people that had left their comments underneath. Words like ‘filth’ ‘scum’ and the some of the most hate filled mindless statements that I’ve ever heard. Baring in mind this story is about school children, the image above these statements was of school children. Even more worryingly, was the wide demographic of people that these comments belonged to.

I’ve since, unsuccessfully tried to locate the post, so I could directly quote some of the comments that were made. Unfortunately, there are an abundance of similar groups and posts with the same type of comments and reactions from people.

A link to the Daily Mail online’s coverage of the story.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3387163/GCSE-levels-set-rejigged-summer-Islam-s-holy-month-Ramadan-account.html

A wide cross section of society attacked these students, with such hate filled and aggressive language, for little else than having their exam timetables rearranged. It’s as though a story like this is the green light that people are waiting for, to legitimise their hatred.

Undoubtedly these people’s hatred, has been exacerbated by these inflammatory media reports and propaganda. Even so, the capacity for people to hate interchangeable minorities, with such venom and ferocity, for little other reason other than sensationalised nonsense written in tabloid newspapers, is a shocking reminder of the ugliness that ordinary humans are capable of.