Upside_down_culture.cda

 

[Unintentional ad for Stranger Things + Netflix. It really is unavoidable in postmodernism.]

Physical matter.mp3

I made a wormhole diagram and put the model of the world we live in into the Stranger Things schema. It was a bit of fun during the crimbo-limbo boredom. I'm going to expand on this diagram. I made it into an art form (but going out on a limb to put it into an art exhibition is another kettle of fish). Keeping the ribbon panel at the top of the work is important because it gives an insight into the origin of the work - it came from an iPad. If I were to crop that bit out, it would be cut off from its roots. It also contains the date, so that it acts as the artwork's witness, as it came into existence at that time and place [albeit on iPad]. 

Quasi matter.mp3

I called it 'That's Y / Axis (After Stranger Things)', because the wormhole is vertical (Axis Y on graphs) - and in some sense is a hierarchy of some sort in this 'not so' new century, but it also acts as a pun for 'that's why'. I put 'art world: right side up', and it is symbolic for the form of the good. We were born in the upside-down (The bridge of the wormhole), so this world is all we've known. Kids were living in a dream that the world is full of possibilities, but is an illusion and they are kidnapped into dimension business by toy advertisements. The institutions we know that exist, are imitations of the form of the good, surrounded by monsters which came from dimension business. BANK's Ad men, the bad men find themselves there. 

The exotic matter (The wormhole wall) is the media that 'glue' our cultures together into a coherent form of journalism for the masses. Social media is the void outside the wormhole, where everything from the upside down is sucked into slop, as a consequence of the media being ruptured - due to cynicism of the news being an authentic source. (That car from Stranger Things prompted me to think back to someone's art exhibition called 'Pertinent Folly' as a reference to apophenia and cultural schemas, and they had a miniature toy car in the show, probably to criticise conspiracy theories...but it’s integral in the post-truth era, maybe they were criticising this era in relation to the renaissance). Maybe I’ll add algorithms and AI slop with the social media as the void on the wormhole diagram, because it’s the place where reasoning goes to die.

There's something pertinent about the series I made during MA Fine Art. I hid a lot of things in the blog I made back then, because of the failed blog in 2016. The copies of these blogs are supposed to be gone now because I erased them, but I don't know what happened to the other copies

The abyss or dimension business isn't inherently evil (it's just the chaotic universe and survival instinct - the desire to win), and is a necessary evil to earn money that applies to several levels [I later wrote this, because I've compartmentalised my paid work identity from my personal identity - the ego is the bridge too, mediating the outside world with the internal one], but it goes too far and monopolises places. It'll be cathartic to criticise certain figures as evil, but in doing so, one is able to criticise evil from the place of being good, even though no one is perfect.

Utopia07.cda

No place here.mp3

This place was given the name out of Thomas More's pit of satire in 1516. Empires ahead, and we find ourselves in Kubrick's white spaces with traces of the past. It's not the same - people and places change. I recently put a metaphysical bookmark of my life on death row: my Instagram from 2012 (- 2026 RIP). This was a virtual spirit of my young adulthood from 18 to 31. I'm waving my photos, followers, follows, conversations and the stalkers on the shore, as I slowly drift into the sea. I can put the memories in their natural place: in my head. I've realised that it's what's kept me stuck at 18. With this account gone, I can finally put the chapter of crushes and unrequited loves behind me and live out the rest of my life organically, with a fulfilling adult life. I want to feel what the adults felt, before the internet took over and infantilised the adult ego. 

Rejection.mp3

I have another account, but it's private and only has 13 followers I know in real life. I can post random things and not care about how I'm perceived. In my public artist account, when I posted, I felt like I was duping people I know in real life of this persona I don't embody. I want the organic lifestyle more than the strategic one, like following people out of artistic-career obligation. 'Maybe I'm not an artist in the 21st century sense, but at least I'm free from the moral-social obligation of one.' There's something very obvious in the art world on social media - artworks don't get judged based on their own merit. It's always married to the artists' social status and social/institutional connections. I want fairness, and in respect of knowledge, I think it's problematic. This is why I'd rather leave the sham and be a loner, I just want to pursue it for its own sake. (Showing another example of the voice, exit and loyalty model)

A clearer view of this place.mp3

This [inner] place isn't in the physical realm that’s bound within time. It's a place beyond politics where the thinkers, the polymaths, and the people who taught me and know about IT reside. I can’t describe IT accurately. It's a place that's open to interpretation, maybe even resists interpretation. Some would argue that it's outside, but even I don't know- it’s filtered through into my imagination. I just sense people I vibe with (when you meet someone who knows IT, you just know), the cold scientific observation is just memories and neurons interacting with each other, but that is where there is a disconnect between the subject and object - the seeing the tangible vs the experiencing intangibility. 

However, I believe the entrance to this place is a personal path one takes. When someone showed me their artwork a decade ago, it felt like a moment of 'finally, someone gets me'. But I think this was a mistake, because the psychological distance is too close. At least it's not something to be openly acknowledged. There was something deeply wrong [on several levels] with him putting me on some pedestal and saying to me, 'Look at this naked woman turning away from the world, and staring at a white space of nothing, but isn't scared', whilst looking at me, whilst I was looking at the work. It was a problem because this was not meant to happen, as enlightenment is an individual endeavour. I descended into psychosis a month afterwards. The self aware can’t directly-openly acknowledge another self aware. It doesn’t work like that. There has to be one container and one contained from a Jungian perspective. Can’t be two containers. I haven’t figured it out, but I know something went wrong there [later findings: the symbolic relations is out of place]

Enthusiasm as sacred energy.mp3

I read that the psychoanalytic explanation of psychosis is when there is too much libido [energy] attained in a short amount of time. I think that's what's happened. Another interpretation is when the person gets swallowed by the shadow. I don't believe it was drug-induced, because I feel I was spiked during the episode when I absconded from the hospital.

Avoidants' curse.mp3

My second psychosis happened after someone else, too close for comfort, put me on a pedestal. Nothing was said directly, but there was a feeling that I was being put on a pedestal of some sort. I also did something wrong, where I almost made someone go through this when I told them how I felt, and was expecting a polite no thanks, but instead witnessed her act out codes on Instagram shortly after. She was showing me her or my lack/ a collective lack framed around language, and I hated it. I blocked her at one point to make the pain stop. Reaching one’s hand for a ripe fruit then being shocked when another hand reaches back. Maybe that racing heart is really just intense fear.

“What we give in love, is essentially what we do not have and, when what we do not have returns to us, there is undoubtedly a regression and at the same time a revelation of the way in which we have failed the person (manque a la personne) in representing his lack.” (Seminar X, 30th January, 1963). 

[Researching this topic is making me angry, but I can’t stop researching it]

I'm starting to see it as a way to get people to back off from becoming too close / keep the desire at bay, even though it's pathological/immature. Maybe it's karma, and it's probably best I'm in the post-infatuated/in latency period now. I definitely thought too much about this. Enthusiasm is sacred energy and isn’t one to give away light-heartedly. Maybe this is why people complain that dating apps are draining?

Gravity. Nothing quite captures the cultural zeitgeist we're in without an out-of-context clip from a sci-fi film

Quiet at sea.mp3

This is probably I prefer solitude and peace now. It's less exciting but more grounded. It's one of the reasons why I have to delete Instagram. I have to. It doesn't have a place left for me. Imagine seeing the architecture of a play: the props and curtain to only to be told to ignore it again and pretend it’s real. 

Plus I like the feeling of being out at sea/lost in space/lost in the forest [pick an overused metaphorical scenario] I think my way home is through my memories, but it's not a public-life or even a group setting endeavour (something that is in fashion right now). So I'm going to hide from the media-art world circus like a Jedi going to self-imposed exile. Some might tut and think I’m an idiot for wearing an invisibility cloak, but I think not entering it while I’m alive is a smarter choice.

My physics teacher from year 11 was talking about mirrors. He used a student as a verbal demonstration - he said, ‘the student can’t go into the mirror to retrieve her reflection. If she does, she will get hurt.’ I don’t believe he was talking about GCSE physics only. It’s funny how the other side is labelled as virtual reality, even in physics. But that’s probably forgotten about among augmented reality.

‘But as if to temper this danger there is an interesting twist in the mirror stage theory, introduced in Seminar VII. Not only is it the case, Lacan says, that the mirror gives the subject mastery over his or her previously-fragmented body, but it also has a secondary function as a barrier to keep the object inaccessible. The mirror, he says, “fulfils another role, a role as limit. It is that which cannot be crossed. And the only organisation in which it participates is that of the inaccessibility of the object” (Seminar VII, p.151).’

What Does Lacan Say About… Love? – LACANONLINE.COM 

Imprinting06.cda

Gratitude Lyrics. I made this one in 2018. It's text art - made up of names of people who I thought influenced me in my formative years. In reality, this list would be a lot longer.

'Warning: this is an intellectual advert to dive into the Wicked and Wizard of Oz franchise'. 

Act 1:

No place like home.mp3 

 

Role models have the potential to be maternal and predatory, like the sculpture, Maman. Even the political-cultural systems like education, consumption and showbiz follow this pattern that is the familiar home (and the only homes we’ve known), but also as exploitative places.  

Merch sent by the wizard. What he represents was so wonderful, that I bought this collectable cup for £20, so I can put it in my home as some trophy - as a reward for researching so much into Wicked. At least it's not paper but it's the same, and in return, the perceived importance of these items alongside deceit (in Wicked: For Good, madame Morrible represents the media machine - that helped to create and protect the wizard's image. Glinda and Elphaba represent public figures), and this dynamic protects against anarchy. This is a neither a good or bad thing. It’s the never that hides the real in the context of Baudrillard. The hermetic truth is that the wizard is an ordinary man.

Lifting the red curtain.mp3 

 

‘My first role models had clinical depression and liked to jet off, so my internal working model is flocked (with the imaginary collective I long to be with).’ 

 

Might be the other way around, but I think some of these role models [some academics, but could also be applied to something impersonal, like social media algorithms] hate my guts, because I’ve learnt what they’ve taught me, but unconsciously refuse to play the illusory aspirational narrative. In Plato’s Symposium, it’s considered shameful to become caught by the power of role models, or even one’s own power due to the materiality. On some imaginary level, I don’t want to end up like Elphaba in the first Wicked film (musical “clean” version when compared to the original Maguire novel), where she was tricked and framed by people with authority over socio-cultural narratives. A similar trope was in Nolan’s Oppenheimer, where the protagonist was being manipulated and framed (and the film was based on a true story, so it could happen to anyone in real life - even without their own knowledge). A black and white- all or nothing explanation: These scapegoats are too strong-willed to be silenced, see what they're not supposed to see, and resist being bribed with external wealth and power, hence they are dangerous, and a threat to a corrupt system. Real life characters including myself, aren’t as morally idealistic. It kind of becomes a mindset for saviour complex.

 

Reading the yellow bricks.mp3  

 

 

I felt internally angry (deep within myself and not the regular reactionary anger), when a lecturer told me during a group tutorial in 2015, that I was a student of the university, so I’m obligated to say what my artwork is really about - as a sly dig in reaction to me downplaying my cognition out of some fear (which is probably what’s discussed in the paragraph above). Maybe this sly dig was done pre-emptively (after all, the lecturer was an artist too), so I continued to refuse to talk about true intentions - I’m manipulated regardless. Also, on a side note, the algorithm appears to not levitate my work to the masses, but the low view count on the algorithm might be protecting me from the predators that follow from fame, similar to how the lecturer was protecting me from being exploited by the academic system. Do we really have control over our decisions, or are we just prey to forces of the Other? 

 

I’ve been in this moral battle with the bigger world since my first day at primary school, which, funnily enough, was around the same time Bourgeois’ Maman was made, 1999. 

In my next post, I’ll write about spirituality, this imaginary collective - that is a guild for people seeking heavenly love.

Green and rose spectacles.mp3

ChatGPT if useful if you use it wisely. Just don't give into the prompts to share your written work for it to improve it. It’s like having a very close intellectual friend who likes to gossip and listens to hearsay facts, and that’s just the way they are. What is heavenly love? [Defying Gravity is a beautiful song if you listen to what the lyrics are saying]

Act 2: That post-writing, self-reflected under-the-hat analysis at the end-

I have tension headache now. I frequently work with people who speak little English, and when they say they feel embarrassed for their communication skill, because I’ve mastered speaking English to a fluent level- I want to tell them I understand, but I know I can’t demonstrate how I understand with a British accent. What does that make me? And now the system wants research from third generational British-Chinese students. I had an experience where someone told me they only requested to see me, because I wrote I was British Chinese in the PhD proposal. They only want someone who is willing to play along for exchange of prestige, and I was tempted. But my subconscious wasn’t allowing me to use my cognition. It’s a dishonour to have desire to work for a system that behaves like this and masks itself behind Ancient Greek ideals. I can’t do it anymore. It’s like the emerald city: collective illusion within skilled architecture, but red taped and morally deficit. On a macro level, Oz buries the whole land. In the original 1939 film, the escapists’ dream (in groundbreaking technicolour) is more real than the “real”.

 Sometimes I think there’s a deeper rationale why I only produce work about western culture- as a defiance and protective stance. Maybe I want to keep part of myself, for myself. 

Harlow’s monkeys.mp3 (writing this not sober - I feel like my writing tone is more sincere after drinking)

I’m in the process of doing shadow work, I feel like all the unpleasant bits are coming out. I low key feel like I’m becoming a bad person. I have moments where I don’t know who I am anymore. Hope there is a light at the end of the tunnel? I don’t think the roles models I had, taught me this aspect of life well enough. It’s dark, but maybe my actual role models were modelled from empty personas crafted by the PGCE system. The wire cloth monkey is systematic, efficient, and gives information as nutrients. The role models appeared too rational and put together, but at the same time, there is only so much you can visually see in someone. No one is a mind reader. Object-subject problem. Even I appear to be someone who looks ok but a bit angry at times when I have all this going on, but the anger is not presented in a way that is pathological. It’s just presented as a bit stressed and immature. I’ve got a lot of work to do.

I have a question on my mind for a while now, is giftedness classed as neurodivergence? (I think i’m 2e), but I’m too scared to identify with it or seek diagnosis, because when I indirectly suggested that I was gifted to a lecturer (whom I wrongly trusted) in 2014, he insinuated that I was too old to be classed as gifted. And part of me thinks I’m wishful thinking, if I seek diagnosis and I don’t have it, I’m a fraud. Maybe I perceived it wrongly, but people were hinting it at the MA fine art pizza party before graduation, and asked me why I was hiding - but I pretended not to know, because I felt anxious. I secretly don’t like it because it’s a burden. I ruin things because I analyse too much. I just want someone to sit with me and understand. 

I also have another question, how does one reverse sexual imprinting on the rhesus monkeys and the wire monkey that gives it food?

2e autism or ADHD but masked.mp3

There’s actually signs of me stimming, but because I’m so used to it, I don’t see it. I had this intense interest in wicked recently, that I watched the films, read the reviews,  researched the history and symbolism, analysed the songs in the musical, and listened to reviews of the original book. I want to read Maguire’s novel. I bet marketers saw this as a cash cow opportunity. I’ve also been listening to defying gravity on repeat so I can self regulate. But I thought this was normal for me. I don’t tell anyone about it though, because some level I know it’s not normal behaviour. If I told people in 2012, they’d label me as crazy and ostracise me. But I still can’t suffer in open, as I haven’t been legitimately diagnosed [what is the best way of critiquing something that is socio-politically sensitive and polarising in the 2020s?]. I’ve got this imagination that the teachers and lecturers hate me, because I’m not the ideal gifted scholar. Deep down I just want to be loved. I’m forced to be a clown now.

Internalising the broken system.mp3

After I got over being people pleasing (or maybe I’ve internalised it and feel bad for doing something wrong, or that it’s got to the point I don’t want to mask anymore), I found out that I don’t really care about social norms and mincing words. I just get by and do my own thing. I’m not here to be liked; I respect people, and I do mince my words so it’s more palatable. At the end of the day, we are Animals with social contracts and niceties based on the evolutionary model of survival. As long as I’m not actively hurting people, mince my words in a social setting (even though internally I wouldn’t say it like that), then I’m not doing anything wrong. Actually, I think I got it from my parents because they were just flat out blunt all the time (they still are, but only within the family unit, they’re actually nicer to strangers than to their own kids). 

[I write this blog, so I don’t have to be insufferable in real life. There was a time where I used to talk peoples’ ears off, but they didn’t seem to care, so I stopped trying and don’t remember how to talk at length. The energy isn’t concentrated on talking now. Maybe it was a good thing I masked myself with teachers, because I would have been a nightmare to teach if I was myself]. 

My relationship with my role models had the potential to become very good, but it’s soured. I tried to make myself better by writing (tried writing a blog for my final year of BA Fine Art, a decade ago and was one of the contributing factors that led to the psychosis in 2016). It’s only highlighting the I’m not ok, you’re not ok matrix position - and now I just feel bad and think my role models are bad. I think the relationship I have with formal education is beyond repair - I could constantly sense the system and teachers wanting the gifted aspect of myself, but not wanting the neurodivergent aspects. It's not likely that I'll go back to studying or teaching again, as there are too many ghosts. Maybe the relationships with the role models have to figuratively die, so I can walk on my own path. ‘The teacher appears when you are ready. And when you are truly ready, the teacher disappears.’

The hero, narrative and simulacrum.mp3

Seeing Dorothy and her protagonist trajectory from another angle in Wicked: for good, has made me dislike what protagonists represent, because it’s making me interpret the situation as the protagonist is just there at the right place, the right time, and succeeds because it’s convenient for influential people’s agenda in favour of the cultural narrative they are trying to set. Is success really a meritocratic internal locus of control of the individual, are they the author of that success? Or is it framed by the narrative that falls on an individual who has traits that is wanted at the time? They might become the new wizard. 

This is depicted when we see Dorothy throwing the bucket of water over Elphaba in shadow form, that references the trickery in Plato’s cave to the prisoners (the citizens of Oz). They are just accepting the social consensus of her saving the day without questioning the truth, just like how we are accepting the producer’s choice of silhouette and signifiers of Dorothy IN THE HOLLYWOOD FILM. (A place where post-industrialised legends are made)

Crime_and_curiosity05.cda

In the poor defence of my demonic inner child, maybe using the word 'crime' is a punitive term to describe the grey area of common behaviour that I sweep under the carpet. Regrettably, one bought from an impulse buy at a young age. 

Voyeurism in the age of social media.mp3

Many would associate voyeurism with sexual gratification of watching someone getting undressed, but I'm writing about it with a non-sexual framework. Jung suggested that libido encompasses non-sexual energy that motivates people, moving on from Freud's reasoning that everything stems from sexual desire. I think the development of web 2.0 has given a lot of opportunities for people to exercise voyeuristic tendencies into browsing profiles to gain insight into the lives of others, without the effort and social risk of asking directly.   

The ethical see-saw of looking.mp3

I don't believe the passive gleaming into things people have posted publicly stems from a place of evil, but maybe from a place of curiosity and the fear of coming across too curious. This fear or another perceived barrier becomes firewood when paired with parasocial proximity and the urge to know. I think this proximity is the perceived mental or imaginary space between the self and the Other. Celebrities serve an important role that acts as a buffer to dispel some of that curiosity in a non-creepy way. One can just go down a rabbit hole of their favourite celebrity without being a creep, but this often becomes a problem when the perceived proximity is too strong, and the individual acts out. 

I drew a triangular model of what forms the passive gaze for this particular thing I'm writing about, but it sort of works with the application of the male gaze, where 'desire to know' is just 'desire'.

I grew up watching Sky (The UK&European satellite TV as blue as my website) and the big five (BBC1, 2, ITV, Channel 4 and 5 in the UK) in the 90s/00s, when female objectification was rampant*. Whether being a voyeur is creepy or not, depends on the scale of exhibitionism from the other individual. Again, I don’t mean exhibitionism on the basis of sexual gratification, but on the person’s willingness to being watched and placing themselves in a position where they are watched for some symbolic gain. 

I once stumbled on a Sky channel that was out of my depth. My absent parents didn't supervise me. It wasn't because they didn't love me. It was because they were trapped in the system, so they remained prisoners of a bigger narrative to make money.

Things like having a public profile is in the indirect contractual agreement between the exhibitionist and voyeurs - the transactional nature of voyeurs gaining information, and the exhibitionist gaining the feeling of 'being seen', validation, which might indirectly involve money from sponsors. Advertisers use the love of looking as a leverage. The exhibitionist is then put on a social pedestal (but we know that is an unstable surface with risks of devaluation and objectification).

I found this on one of my urban walks. Don't know what it is; haven't seen one in my life. A bus drove past me when I was taking a photo. 

Creepiness or wrongness is when this agreement is warped, and is felt as a weird, uncanny vibe of being watched. Is it fair to write that we feel like we’re being watched all the time in the 2020s? — I think the exhibitionists have personal responsibility to safeguard their own information, but social media, immaturity, and ‘authentic brand building’ is loosening that knowledge in keeping information private. Of course I’m biased in my loyalties with passive voyeurism, I people watch so I can analyse people and write about anthropological stuff involving social dynamics. There wouldn’t be advancement in medicine if people didn’t steal bodies from graves in the 18th and 19th centuries. We wouldn’t have the intricate knowledge of anatomy today if it weren’t for sacrilege and criminals’ desire to know. 

I'm trying to unpack that uncanny feeling of being watched into a visual model. It might relate to Deleuze and Guattrai's idea of rhizomes. In some ways it is a delusion but in some ways it is a transformative one in metacognition, which I use to trigger the motivation for writing - there’s a small kind of thrill of being watched because it is imaginary so it’s safe. It's a trick to keep on going when no one is watching. It's a bonus if there really are people watching. FOR CLARITY: this is from my point of view, and how I feel internally. If it resonates it’s by chance, I’m not a mind reader. I’ve been there before, where I was delusional and thought I was soulmates with someone.

Satellite dish the size of fry up.mp3

It reads awful, but it exists firmly British popular imagination, and I’m just bringing that information out onto text format.

* I was researching watching Sky in the 90s, and went onto an interesting rabbit hole of satellite dishes being debated as class coded, especially after Sunak's statement (it was solidified in my mind as a luxury status symbol to have, when I observed that the teachers recorded educational documentaries on their Sky to show the class - there was a running rumour in my school at the time, that the teachers were well-off, but this is confused with cultural capital - now as an adult, I have a Sky subscription, carry a Sainsbury reusable bag to grocery shop and wonder why, because my parents shopped at ASDA whilst I was growing up. I don't think my role models were my biological parents - I'm wondering that - who raised me culturally? For some reason I don't want to see it). 

Nevertheless, it makes it interesting to contemplate about, because TV in the 90s and 00s had a lot of mysogyny and male gaze, especially if you compare it with the 2020s, where it's more censored, and a lot of places are becoming gentrified with regeneration and up-pricing activities - maybe it's a symbolic carpet of some sort to hide discrimination, but I don't think this carpet was from an impulsive buy and I don't know who, or what is responsible for selling it. 

Beeple's robot dogs, 'Regular Animals' that poop out information might have an answer - in the arts: Pablo Picasso's treatment of women, and Andy Warhol and his factory vision (but don't forget, they were outputs/products of an even bigger system, I don’t think they are the big bad as Beeple portrays them as. Their mindset was formed in the milieu they grew up in, and the socio-political-cultural conditions had to be right for them to inject their ideas in it suggests that they aren’t the only ones making the conditions right). It’s incomprehensible so we look outwards. Why? Examining the title, ‘regular animals’ - an ordinary creature, indicative of you and I, it’s because it keeps us safe from ourselves.

I won't forget that time when I was studying BA Fine Art, and a boy in my cohort painted the human centipede, and a lecturer with a PhD said it was too literal.

I have a psychosomatic stomachache and traumatised after editing this. The next post is something to do with imprinting. I’ll write about role models in the next one.