#168: National Memory (History of Britain's Involvement in Slavery Edition)

A display cabinet alongside a filing cabinet.  

In each is a card.  

The one in the display cabinet reads, “What do we want to display?” while the one in the filing cabinet reads, “What do we want to file away and forget?”  

The display cabinet additionally contains a number of boards on which are printed the following articles:

Olusoga, David (2023) The Ties That Bind Us. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/28/slavery-and-the-guardian-the-ties-that-bind-us (Accessed: 28-29 March 2023).

Younge, Gary (2023) Lest we remember: How Britain Buried Its History of Slavery. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/29/lest-we-remember-how-britain-buried-its-history-of-slavery (Accessed: 29-30 March 2023).

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See also: The Guardian Cotton Capital Special Series.

#167: Collective (and Individual) Memory and Forgetting

A mantelpiece and a wastepaper basket.  

One card stands on the mantelpiece in a frame, another is crumpled and sits in the bin.  

Both read, “What goes here?”

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After: Spinney, Laura (2022) If the secret police had a file on you, why wouldn’t you want to see it? Ask the Germans spied on by the Stasi. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/28/secret-police-have-file-do-you-want-to-see-it-stasi-east-germany-siegfried-wittenburg (Accessed: 28 November 2022). 

#166: Talking

Talk

Talk to someone

Talk to anyone

Talk about something

Talk about someone

Talk about anything

Talk about anyone

Talk here

Talk there

Talk anywhere 

In person

Online

Offline

Down the line

You just need at least one other

Find a space and fill that space

Make it safe

Just talk and talk and talk it through

Seek and find feedback to

Find what you need

From who you need it

And

never

ever

stop

This is something I find hard to do

Although the above was easy to write.

#165: Brain Fog

Cartoon.

Someone sat working at a desk.  A cloud of fog obscures their head, shoulders and much of the upper part of the picture.

#164: Titles to interpret, or change, an artwork

Choose a work of art and give it a title to interpret it, or to change it into something new.

For example:

The Commuter’s House for Man with a Newspaper by René Magritte. 

Or one of these:

The Disappearance

Liberation Outside* 

Queer Freedom Beyond*

Bad News 

Good News

The Abduction

The war

Coloniser

Staged conformity* 

Queer resonance* 

Another locked room case

Suburban Nightmare

* With thanks to Leon Williams and Tate for the inspiration for the whole idea, and these particular titles.

#163: The information that you need

A gallery full of posters, leaflets, booklets etc that give all the information that the town, region and/or country the gallery is in is lacking.  

#162: Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world

Poster.

Scenes of a teenage vampire engaged in various acts, partaking the fruits of knowledge, so to speak.  In one they are reading in their bedroom, surrounded by books; in another they are browsing library shelves; here the cinema, there listening to music, or dancing, or in an art gallery and so on.  Arranged around the pictures are these words:

“Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts –  be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being. Fully understand your enormous value in the scheme of things because the planet needs people like you… who can minister to the world with positive, mischievous energy, young people who seek spiritual enrichment and who see hatred and disconnection as the corrosive forces they are. These are manifest indicators of a human being with immense potential… A little smart vampire full of raging love, amazed by the world – that will be you, my young friend.” - Nick Cave