THE SUBTERFUGE OF KNOWING.
In many ways we all have an element of bluff in our practice, and with chaos comes order, but that often precedes our understanding of the very art of knowing and to look subjectively upon oneself and one’s work. Our failures in many ways are our triumphs, we explore the holy grail in the hope that the enlightenment of truth expels the notion that our goal is to seek some meaning in life. We can jest of course at the warrant and entanglement of justice when its sole purpose is to provoke an attack on the innocent.
BUT WHERE IS THE JUSTICE IN WAR.
Where is the justice for those caught up in the crossfire of men.
When the living have no resolution in the aid of the dead or dying, when all about are losing the battle at cost.
Haste only quickens the relentless march, where only time can heal the pain of the few, that have bore witness to the slaughter of innocence.
The rivers of blood flow freely through the concrete scape, stained and ebbing with solace, and only the bells toll louder than the screams that echo amongst the ruins.
Sirens wail..!
Bombs drop..!
Machine guns rattle tat tat..!
Where is the justice when the dawn lifts its head on the new day.
Chaos brings only the mourning of a father, a mother, a son or a daughter who has lost the will to live.
Faces shattered and forlorn amongst the broken and the damned, condemned to exile for actions that they can not endure.
Fate is the only certainty in life and death, at the hands of masters who want submission and control, where a black veil stands asunder once hope stood entwined with the Earth.
Where is the justice for habitual terror.
Where is the justice from the master’s hand.
Where is the justice for those who lay dying.
and where is the justice for the dead.
I ask but where is the justice in war.
The poem was written on D-Day 6th June 2024 in response to The Eve of the Deluge an exhibition by Pat Flynn and Andrew McDonald displayed at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery in Rawtenstall.
Discussing Joseph Beuys.
Joseph Beuys talks about the fundamentals of understanding material connections “It can also be understood as a truly creative achievement, engendered by the human being, by the individual himself, and not a process indoctrinated by some authority or other. That’s very important. From this, as I see it, one learns to recognize a great deal about sculptural situations and about warmth in the creative realm; in the principle of evolution. Thinking in the free individual is a reoccurrence of the evolutionary principle in existence from the beginning of time. The human being himself becomes creator of the world and experiences how he can continue creation. This now also becomes his responsibility, and all the facts and realities connected with this become visible. And then one is actually inside it all. Feeling doesn’t achieve anything here.” (Beuys, Joseph; Harlan, Volker. What is Art? (p. 45). Clairview Books. Kindle Edition.)
What for me was so remarkable in some ways, was the use of fabulation to convey a message of man’s intervention through the use of really 3 dominate materials, Felt, Fat and Wood and how he approached the connection and then the engagement of how he portrayed and displayed the message. Take ‘Fat Chair’ of 1964, the use of a simple chair with a wedge of fat like cheese that adorns the seat. for me it’s a representation of greed, but of laziness to, Fat cats sit idly by while watching their assets grow from plundering the land of resource, a concept that he saw only to well in WWII. I can draw analogies within his work to the aftermath of the war and the resolute effect it had on the poor, impoverished and working class. Beuys deep belief was for a utopian world, one where he saw in society after the war the need for warmth, food and stability. Society needed to rebuild itself and though I can’t imagine what that must have felt like at the time, I can get a sense of what Beuys was trying to allude to, as capitalism and socialism were rife, the need to rebuild on both sides of the West and East a must, though that created monumental divisions. His work was challenging and misunderstood, and was and still is in my opinion reflective of societies past, present and future.
“I think nowadays,” he once told an interviewer, “there’s a deep misunderstanding amongst people that art should be understood through logical sentences.” His own theory was that it was an intimate collaboration, that a work of art was the result of work and artistry on the part of both the creator and the viewer. “The work of art enters into the person and the person internalises the work of art as well, it has to be possible that these two completely sink into each other … Art enters into the person and the person enters into the work of art, no?” (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/30/fat-felt-fall-earth-making-and-myths-joseph-beuys)
It’s so interesting having read about Beuys, how his thinking was so aligned with the future work of Donna Haraway. It connects in a way that I had not even realised up until now. Beuys ‘I like America and America likes me’ work of 1974, is in so many ways, a future parallel to Haraway’s ‘The Companion Species Manifesto’ of 2003. Both works are working out anecdotal relationships, and how we as a human species connect to a non human species and bond.
15th November 2023.