Notes Sample Issue by Notes Magazine

NOTES

Oxford and Cambridge Fresher Sample Issue

Contents – Will Thomson ‘The Fox Calls The Logos Sour’ – Nick March ‘Crazy Flowers’ ‘A Note On Art, A Question of Value: Emin, Creed, and Hirst’ – Laurie Lewis Life Drawing – Jonny Bruce – James McKnight ‘The Human Machine and Contemporary Capitalism’ ‘Prayer Flags’ and ‘Sloth’ – Alice Fiennes ‘The Big Bang’ – Will Burgess – Matt Neal ‘Fragmentation’ – Will Thomson ‘Speculations on ‘The Celibate Life’’ – Jamie Patel ‘The Untouchable’ – Poppy Damon Photogram of a Lightbulb – Matthew Clifton ‘‘The Mistress of the Animals’: Contrast and Continuum in a Theran Fresco’ – Florence C. Smith-‐Nicholls ‘Swallow’ – Marc Shalet – Jonny Bruce ‘Orchid’ – Jamie Patel

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Front cover image by Alice Fiennes. Back cover image, ‘Elegy’ by Laurie Lewis.

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The Fox Calls The Logos Sour I cannot penetrate to what it is: juicy on the vine; if I could I would squish it between my toes and press a wine. Slip the world, but in life only the words change and I am an animal, hopping forever, for grape. by Nick March

Crazy Flowers the crazy flowers bloom there too (Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957) flowers on the hillside blooming crazy (Bob Dylan, ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’, 1975)

The influence of the Beat movement on Dylan is clear to see. The surreal imagery of Another Side onwards gestures towards Ginsberg, while the restless spirit of Kerouac deeply marks all Dylan’s work. Here, Dylan echoes Kerouac at the same time as he moves away from Kerouac’s world. Kerouac’s image anticipates some of the significance of the flower in the decade to come. The flowers are ‘crazy’, the movement’s complex relationship with madness finely condensed. Kerouac transforms the city, New York, with an image of nature. Dylan exploits Kerouac’s phonic sensitivity – the way /bl/ responds to /fl/ and the way /aʊ/ moves into /u:/, each reaching in Dylan for the /oʊ/ of ‘lonesome’. And the madness remains. But Dylan has retreated to nature more fully. He echoes Kerouac’s words at the very moment he withdraws from the underlying vision of a community of urban madmen. The ‘flowers’ are no longer crazy companions but the backdrop for one relationship: ‘I could stay with you forever and never realise the time’. The more personal vision of Dylan’s mid-‘70s work is evident here. Of course, the flowers are also more than a setting. They distil a sense of abundance, the abundance of the relationship, blooming in its own way. But as the refrain makes clear that relationship is painfully fragile. The implicit transience of the flowers also reflects the fragility of the relationship. While the prospect of a transcendence of time is raised – of blooming without decay - time painfully reasserts itself in the ringing ‘when’ of the refrain.

A Note on the Last British Art of the Twentieth Century A question of value: Emin, Creed and Hirst ‘If I put you in the show it will be patronising because people won’t get your work ‘cause it’s so tiny and it’s so intricate people will miss it and will think that I’ve put you in the show because you’re my girlfriend …. You can’t be in the show” [Carl Freedman, gallery owner, curator, Emin’s boyfriend in 1995]. I was really upset. He said ‘if you can think of a really big idea you can be in the show’ (laughs), is this big enough for you?. I come up with the idea of the

tent, and that’s what spurred me on…I ended up being the star of the show, well my tent did, it pulled the crowds in, it was amazing, the amount of publicity.” – Tracey Emin, talk with ICA Director Gregor Muir, ‘Culture Show’, 8th April 2011 “It's not… a solo exhibition nor a group exhibition... and in a way the only equivalent I can find, thinking about it, is that it's more like a... degree show than anything else. In the sense that, you know, in the sense that each artist is given the same amount of space... and then in the sense that there's going to be judgment taking place, it seems like a unique kind of show also because over the years I've often watched the Turner Prize on TV and had a laugh at it and, you know, got excited about it, you know?” – Martin Creed “I always ignore money. It’d be nice to make lots of money but it’s quite difficult, because every time I make lots of money I make a bigger piece that costs lots of money” – Damien Hirst

*** For me the quotes above illustrate three problems inherent in the work of Tracey Emin, Martin Creed and Damien Hirst: 1) the role of the gallery in the attribution of value to a specific work of art or artist(s). This includes the power of influence exhibition publicity can have over the viewer’s experience. 2) The way in which Creed’s Turner Prize winning work no. 227, the lights going on and off, (2001) was conceived. 3) The false value given to certain art based on a system of monetary attribution and demand; the viewer’s judgment, intuition and acceptance of a work of art as dictated by a ‘price tag’ mentality. Ever since Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) submitted his piece entitled ‘Fountain’ (1917) to the Society of Independent Artists in New York, the definition of art has been questioned. By submitting an objet trouvé (a urinal reoriented to a position of 90°) under the title ‘Fountain’, Duchamp subverted the art tradition in one controversial (but arguably necessary) move. It was this questioning of art that was to influence the whole of its development throughout the twentieth century. By presenting the world with an ordinary object placed in an artistic context, Duchamp created a radical new question: what is art? From this moment, art did not have to be constrained to the limitations of painting, sculpture and architecture alone but was liberated into the realms of found objects, conceptual art and, later, installation. This moment ninety-five years ago has come to dictate our contemporary acceptance of art as having few boundaries. The majority of us are content with our consideration and/or acceptance of a ‘crack’ through the floor of the Tate Modern (2007) as a work of art. ‘Fountain’ was a fantastic moment in the history of art; it was a necessary action and one of supreme liberation. However the way in which this revolutionary action has set a standard of acceptance for the ‘Young British Artists’ has been somewhat anti-climactic and completely valueless. There is a considerable difference between Duchamp’s art and the art of Tracey Emin, Martin Creed and Damien Hirst (it is important to note that these are just three selected artists; they do not represent the entire ‘movement’). The difference lies in the fact that Duchamp followed his own idea to create something new and revolutionary whereas the artists mentioned above have not done anything ‘new’. ‘New’ in the sense that they have not tried to bring art into a different realm of significance; all they have done is to take the idea that art can really be anything if it is reinforced by an idea and placed within an artistic context and abused this for personal fame and financial gain. This strikes me as a particularly violent act. In this respect, art can essentially be anything; its artistic value in contemporary society is dictated by a purely financial criterion. The role of the gallery is instrumental in this attribution of value to art. In the talk with Greg Muir (shown above in extract), Tracey Emin explained how her famous ‘Tent’ (Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 19631995) came into being. At the time, she was in a relationship with Carl Freedman the gallery owner who

put on the showcase of the ‘Young British Artists’ in 1995 entitled Minky Manky (South London Gallery). Emin (who was little-known at the time) was initially refused the opportunity to exhibit her work in the exhibition on the grounds that it was too ‘tiny’ and ‘intricate’. According to Freedman, people would not understand it and would not consider it seriously as Emin was Freedman’s girlfriend. Surely the belief that people would not ‘get it’ should not have stopped Freedman from exhibiting Emin’s initial work. If it was to be a true reflection of the work of contemporary British artists he should not have told Emin that she needed to create something ‘really big’. This instruction would have initially dictated the purpose of the work Emin would have to create. It would have to be a work that would attract crowds and make Emin stand out. The ‘Tent’ was conditioned by a superficial aim; to generate attention, publicity and ultimately money and fame for Emin and Freedman. When the work Emin submitted achieved this, she became ‘the star of the show’. The publicity generated out of the sheer controversy of the situation came to manipulate people’s expectations of the ‘Tent’ as art and Emin as an artist. People going to view the exhibition would have gone expecting something ‘big’ from the work. Regardless of their instinctive reaction, the experience of the ‘Tent’ would have been considerably influenced by this expectation. It seems that the ‘Tent’ was purely an attempt to get noticed.

Tracey Emin, ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995’ (1995)

The amount of publicity a gallery generates for an exhibition creates an expectation of quality or interest prior to the actual contact the viewer has with it. Before the viewer has seen the exhibition they have already built up an expectation of quality based on the advertisement strategies of galleries (publicity in magazines, public posters and television coverage). The viewer is less likely to follow an instinctive reaction if a large amount of publicity or positive ‘hype’ has developed around it. In addition to this the (considerable) fee a viewer has to pay in order to experience the exhibition manipulates how they ultimately view the work exhibited. If a viewer were to enter an exhibition with no prior expectation or exchange of money, the reaction would be considerably more genuine. The use of a single work featured in the exhibition for the advertisement posters singles that one work out. It features not only on the posters but on mugs, plates, bags, umbrellas and anything else the image can be printed on (and thus can be sold). Already, this one work has been given superiority over other works in the exhibition and so

is ultimately viewed in a different light. This is good technique to increase ticket and merchandise sales, but it ultimately attaches a meaning to the work that it never intended to have. The Turner Prize has been a valuable opportunity for contemporary artists to try and create new and often radically challenging work since the award’s conception in 1984. Many previous winners have been elevated from near obscurity to a realm of high critical acclaim. However, since the beginning, the award has been received with scepticism by many and has been the subject of much controversy. All too often the results instigate anger amongst many and seem to be met with fierce criticism. If anything the Turner Prize can be seen as an interesting social experiment; just how far can the artists stretch the boundaries of the art tradition before the public becomes outraged? Often it is those artists who win who cause the most controversy. For me it is Martin Creed who encapsulates all that is uninteresting, lazy and pointless in contemporary art of this ‘Turner Prize’ type. His work 227, the lights going on and off, (2001) which won him the prize was received with a significant amount of outrage, even by previous standards of the award. As the title suggests, it consisted of the lights going on and off in one of the galleries of the Tate Britain (that was it). Throughout this essay I have emphasised my admiration for Duchamp’s questioning of the limitations of the art tradition. However, how far are we willing to go? Can the automatic action of the lights going on and off in a blank gallery space really be considered as art? First we must consider the value that can be gained from work 227. If one of the roles of a gallery space is to provide us with an experience that cannot be obtained in any other environment, then work 227, is completely useless in this respect. If however the point is that this process can be confined to the gallery space but also experienced in other environments (unlike other instillations which physically occupy a space) then work 277 must be credited. However, this is as far as I am personally willing to go. One of the most exciting possibilities opened up by ‘Fountain’ was the possibility for art to be anything. However, for it to be anything it can also be nothing and therefore can become completely meaningless. I am not ready to say goodbye to art, nor am I willing to admit its defeat and render it dead. For it to be anything it must have some inherent purpose which will ultimately benefit our outlook on art. Creating controversial work that is only controversial due to the apparent lack of the artist’s ‘hand’ is not relevant anymore. It has been done many times before and in many far more interesting ways. If art is to be nothing then the work must be exhibited as so. This action must have a significant purpose and must have something significant to say other than the fact that it questions art (this has been done). Instead, Creed presents his work as something else, something we could accept as meaning something valuable to us when in actual fact it is nothing. It is simply too easy, in both its conceptual and physical form. I am perfectly willing to accept art as anything but in order to do so there needs to be some considerable amount of thought behind it, a new way of looking at the world, some conceptual or manual skill required in its production. Creed’s work does not contain any of these qualities. Without submitting myself entirely to the all too often used cliché ‘I could do that, anyone could do that’, never is it more relevant than with the work of Martin Creed. I am not accepting this to be a criterion of art, but there must be a limit; otherwise art will be anything in the sense that it will be nothing. Martin Creed, Work 227 the lights going on and off (2001)

Creed’s work No. 88 (1995) is possibly even more upsetting to me. It is a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball. Is this art? Can the fact that anyone could do this suddenly provide us with a valuable and interesting interpretation of the meaning of art? No. The sheer subjectivity involved in the work does not give it any more significance as art and neither does the fact that it can be physically made by anyone (I have done so in my own way below). I use the term valuable to replace good in my own analysis of contemporary art. The quality of good can never be objectively understood; therefore it should not be used as a criterion in the judgement of a work of art. Creed’s work may be considered good by many but is it valuable? I do not mean valuable in a financial sense; I use the term to refer to some quality of a work of art that enables us as a collective to recognise something within the work as important, beneficial, significant, revolutionary or different (whilst having a purpose). In this respect, Creed’s work is valueless. It takes the objet trouvé to pointless heights.

This is art but is it valuable art? (2011) Laurie Lewis- In response to Martin Creed work no. 88 (1995)

The final quote reproduced at the start of this essay introduces a criticism I have touched upon whilst discussing Emin’s ‘Tent’. This is the role of a system of monetary attribution to works of contemporary art which appear to elevate dead sharks and random coloured dots to the status of masterpieces. Of course I am referring to the work of leading ‘Young British Artist’ Damien Hirst. The hilarity of Hirst’s statement that he ‘always ignores money’ evidently arises from the fact that the majority of his works sell for obscene amounts of money. His sale of a complete series Beautiful inside my head forever at Sotheby’s in 2008 for £111 million achieved record heights for a single artist. This is all very impressive but does it make Hirst’s work significant art? Well, following my line of argument throughout this discussion, Hirst’s work must be considered as art but it is certainly not significant art. Determining the artistic value of a work of art through a system of monetary value completely distorts our experience of it. Thanks to the advertising experience and entrepreneurial skills of Charles Saatchi, Hirst’s work (up to 2003), exhibited in the Saatchi gallery, gained the attention of some significantly wealthy individuals. In our Capitalist society, material objects are given significance based on their monetary value. This is transferred to art as well and is exemplified by Damien Hirst. When going to see a Hirst (if the unfortunate event ever arises) our experience of it is essentially undermined and dictated by the ‘price tag’. If we were to view The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) without the knowledge that it sold for $10-12 Million, our interpretation of it would reflect something genuine. Our experience of it is distorted by this ‘price tag’ and can never adapt to one which reflects a higher level or authenticity. The

nature of Hirst’s work as dictated by money cannot be a contribution to its artistic value otherwise anything which has a large monetary value can also be considered art. As art, Hirst’s work must be viewed as separate from its sale at auction. Unfortunately this is somewhat impossible; therefore Hirst’s art has no intrinsic value. I do not think that Art should be seen as a system of progress in which artists are constantly trying to create better things. I do however feel that Art should be perceived as a system of change in which artists should be concerned with the creation of the new. The new cannot simply be defined as that which has not come before as everything created must reflect on the past. It cannot be characterised as valuable purely on the grounds of being new alone (new for the sake of being new). Therefore the new must contribute something of value to our understanding of Art and the context in which it is created as well as providing us with a new and interesting frame of reference. Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ did precisely this; it made people consider the role of art in contemporary society and it questioned the tradition of art. It was an immensely valuable work in terms of the significance it had on Art History. It stimulated change and presented the world with a different way of looking at Art. From this grew the idea that art can be anything. This can be pursued in creative and influential ways, for example the work of Anish Kapoor or Anthony Gormley. I feel that the way these two artists have approached their work has been of considerable benefit to our society and time. Their work breaks out of the confinement of the gallery space (on many occasions) and into the public space creating new ways of approaching art. It has changed our experience of art for the better as exemplified by Gormley’s Another Place (2006) on Crosby beach or Kapoor’s Sky Mirror (2001 initially unveiled). These works are optimistic and break the boundaries of art in a valuable and interesting way. Emin, Creed and Hirst have not done this. If Art is to change it must follow the example of Kapoor and Gormley in the way in which both artists create an experience for the viewer that cannot be compared to anything previous. It is pure and magnificent artistic creation that puts Emin, Creed and Hirst to shame.

Laurie Lewis

Jonny Bruce, Life Drawing

This the blush—this its draining this the season’s bluntish rain on the bluish kiss my seafared vein and crest in vain so long with stretch and run in stripling ruin panting at the bark of moon. This the bay—this its wailing kiss the waves that stress that throng on bruised bark curse the flagging skin to furl and smith its light so long in vain the changeless flux to swim do scales counting fed the loom. This the stretch—this its failing how its panting backs of cradle stick the kissing bruise to taste its sparrow future—wait so long embarked with waste of bluish wasting swallowed days starve out the soon.

By James McKnight

The Human Machine and Contemporary Capitalism Capitalism has always subordinated human activity to machines. In the last thirty years, however, there has been a qualitative change in the nature of this relationship. The machine has increasingly ceased to have a physical existence outside of the brains and bodies of the workers and it has, instead, become integrated into the organic structures of the working-‐class itself. The aim of this article is to analyse the nature and effects of this change and consider some means by which this condition can be resisted. This article engages throughout with the work of the thinkers associated with post-‐Operaismo, who have been active in developing ideas in this area. Let us first consider how Marx conceptualised machines. For Marx, the machine (or fixed capital), though in one sense the technical means by which the proletariat produces surplus value, is also the congealment of the social knowledge of humanity. Machines do not spring from nature, and are rather the “organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified” (Marx 1973: p. 706). In this way, knowledge, or the ‘general intellect’, can be accurately described as a direct force of production when objectified in a system of machinery. The conditions of social life therefore “come under the control of the general intellect and [are] transformed in

accordance with it” (p. 706). In a similar fashion, workers operating technological apparatuses become appendages to the machine. In contrast to the tool, which the individual worker animates through his or her own skill, the machine comes to posses the strength and skill of the workers and “is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it…The worker's activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and not the opposite” (p. 693). Machines oppose the workers as an alien property, and subordinate living labour to objectified labour. However, Marx’s conception of the machine, though providing some important analytical insights, cannot in itself explain the relationship between human activity and machines in the current, post-‐Fordist, stage of capitalism. Production is no longer primarily or exclusively based on physically identifiable machines, the “locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-‐acting mules etc.” which Marx describes. Instead, knowledge, information, affect, and communication have become direct sources of productive wealth without becoming physically congealed and objectified. In this way, the human faculty of thought is put to work. Paulo Virno’s adaptation of Marx’s concept of the general intellect is important in this regard: “It seems legitimate to maintain that, according to the logic of economic development, it is necessary that a part of the general intellect not congeal as fixed capital but unfold in communicative interaction, under the guise of epistemic paradigms, dialogical performances, linguistic games” (Virno 2004: p. 65). The machines that now command live labour and make the worker produce are not to be found in physically identified objects, and are instead located within the workers themselves. It is in this way that humans can be described as becoming machinic (Marazzi 2011, Pasquinelli 2011). Capital, through the flash of the computer screen or the ring of the mobile phone, can at any moment activate the machine within the workers (i.e. their linguistic and communicative ability). The human machine, understood in this sense, is never turned off. The absorption of the machinic into the working-‐class themselves necessitates a fundamental change in the way capital interacts with the organic structures of the human body. In the Fordist stage of capitalism, which was characterised by operative, repetitive and material labour, the bodies of workers were worn out through their engagement with machines. Once the body was worn out, the worker was either replaced (by a fitter worker) or repaired (through the accessible health services, which emerged with the welfare state). However, these mechanisms for the maintenance of the working-‐class are no longer sufficient for post-‐Fordist capitalism. Instead, in this stage of capitalism, a clash develops between the abilities of humans and needs of capital, leading to the rewiring, reformatting and upgrading of human brains and bodies. The nature of labour in post-‐ Fordist capitalism, with the immersion of the worker in the hyper-‐stimulating information flows, reacts back on the functioning of the brain. Franco ’Bifo’ Berardi argues that it has become increasingly necessary for capital to inhibit sensibility, i.e. the ability to interpret signs which are non-‐verbal and which cannot be codified into binary systems. This form of communication, which deals with empathy and emotion, is dangerous to contemporary capital as it slows down the flow of information, thus undermining the productivity of the worker. By inhibiting sensibility the human machine becomes fully integrated into communicative-‐productive systems, resulting in the

smooth and rapid production and exchange of symbols, signs and abstract codes (Berardi 2011). This new condition moves far beyond a change in what people think (in terms of ideological conditioning) and instead involves a change in how people think. How can the condition described above be resisted? Guy Debord observed in 1957 that “the passions have been sufficiently interpreted; the point now is to discover new ones” (Debord 2006: p. 43). The hitherto existing passions have not simply been interpreted, however, but also denied. The insertion of the machine into the organic structures of humanity must therefore be resisted on an emotional level, with innovative passions being collectively cultivated. Experimental forms of behaviour and intense sensation become ways of disrupting the productive-‐communicative systems of capitalism. In this sense, an outburst of emotion represents the post-‐Fordist form of sabotage, the ‘wooden shoe’ of the new bionic working-‐class. Although this is a project that could conceivably be attempted in the virtual sphere, it is clear that a collective element in the corporeal sense is fundamental. The physical appropriation of space by real existing human beings provides the basis for the development of precisely those forms of behaviours and types of feeling that capital attempts to suppress (such as sensibility). Establishing collective ambiences conducive to the cathartic and emotional expulsion of the machine from the body is therefore an important aspect of resistance to contemporary capitalism. Bibliography  Berardi, Franco ‘Bifo’, After the Future (Edinburgh, 2011)  Debord, Guy, ‘Report on the Construction of Situations’ in Ken Knabb (ed.) Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley, 2006)  Marazzi, Christian, Capital and Affects, The Politics of the Language Economy (Los Angeles, 2011)  Marx, Karl, Grundrisse (London, 1973)  Pasquinelli, Matteo, ‘Machinic Capitalism and Network Surplus Value: Notes on the Political Economy of the Turing Machine’, http://matteopasquinelli.com/docs/Pasquinelli_Machinic_Capitalism.pdf (2011)  Virno, Paulo, A Grammar of the Multitude (Los Angeles, 2004)

Alice Fiennes: Prayer Flags (rotated 90째 clockwise)

Alice Fiennes: Sloth (rotated 90째 clockwise)

The Big Bang by Will Burgess Here’s how this works. I have a gun here in my right hand – no, don’t get up – stay right there, I know it’s hard to believe but I think you’ll like where this is going. Anyway, I’m holding the gun – a six chambered revolver actually – and in my left hand are five bullets. Yes I know you can’t see, you’ll just have to trust me. Do you know how a revolver works? The bullets are loaded into six chambers, mounted in a circle. Once the gun is cocked, one of these bullets will line up with the barrel. After this round has been discharged, the circle rotates to the next chamber and the second bullet is ready to be fired. So here’s the plan: I’m going to load the gun so that, you’ve guessed it, one chamber will remain empty. I will then randomly spin the chambers, cock the gun and fire at your head, Russian roulette style. Please sit down, I know how nervous you must be feeling about this, in fact I’d go so far as to say you hate me right now, but believe it or not there is a point to this. Contrary to first impressions, I’m not a madman. Where was I? Oh yes, so I’m going to fire the gun at your head. You’ve probably worked out that there’s a one in six chance of survival, added to the possibility that I’ll miss, or that I’m lying about the whole thing. If you would like proof, I will discharge at the wall thus… I’m sorry, that must have been terrifying – I should have given you more warning, but there we are: the gun is loaded. The fact is that what I am describing to you I have every intention of carrying out. And the gun will be pressed against your temple – I won’t miss. So – a one in six chance of coming out of this alive. Just like rolling a dice. Oh, but with one exception; once I have fired, I will spin the chambers again and take another shot. I intend to repeat the process ten times. By my calculation, your chance of surviving is now one sixth to the power ten – about 0.00000002%. Then, if you do survive, I’ll take you outside and set you free – the world will literally be yours. Right then, are you ready? Number one… Oh stop whimpering, that was alright wasn’t it? You’re still alive. Number two… There – now sit up straight, I know it’s difficult, but you’ll thank me later. Number three… You’re starting to get the hang of this now aren’t you? Number four… This is just like that Clint Eastwood film. Number five… Do you feel lucky? Number six… Well, do you, punk? Number seven… Now you’re thinking he hasn’t loaded the gun, has he? How can this be possible? Number eight… Now you’re utterly convinced. I can tell you you’re wrong, but what does it matter? Number nine… After all, you’ll be handsomely rewarded if you survive. I think you deserve it. Crikey – I bet the tension’s killing you now – you’re shaking like a leaf. Well, you’ve made it back up to one in six, that’s an achievement in itself. I must say you’re incredibly lucky – but how can that be a coincidence? One in fifty million? Surely that’s more than luck. Are you religious? Because I bet you’re thanking someone for keeping you alive, for putting you here right now after nine shots.

Then again, it’s hardly surprising that you’re still there, quivering in that chair, after nine shots. It sounds ridiculous I know, but how could you experience anything different? If I had shot you, it would be impossible to experience anything at all. You see, the fact that you’re still here means this was the only possible outcome. I can’t see why you’re panicking really. After all, you repeat a process enough times and you’re guaranteed to get lucky once – you’re special, you do know that don’t you? Anyway, I digress – here it is Adam, Number ten…

This should be so much about you it’s not even about love. Why spill ink on abstract maxims when to think on you’s enough? Form I’m through with now my writing has to do with you, not it; Given lately less to rhyme-angst since we'd make the perfect fit. Metre too trips freely, blithely now my heart skips ev’ry beat; And of diction what’s best said is: all art’s fiction – you’re real sweet. Poets had they brass to grant it would at last say life’s like that: More complete when lived, not laboured;

but that’s preaching change the tack. Retract though? No. For art like the Heart has its Reasons. And If too tall its first intentions I, for all it did not do, Seek this late my song’s redemption that’s to say I seek for you. by Matt Neal Fragmentation – by Will Thomson

Speculations on ‘The Celibate Life’ The dust from a four-day affair is now landing all over the floor and your brown legs, the gold-plated legs of my rival, whose eyes had no reason to fall. You’ve led no celibate life. No skirt while chemicals danced on your head. You stole the keys to this ride, and your fables are falling tonight. Because of your struggle to make them their taste for your pastime is fading. Remember the girls in the middle are always the first to fall off. You’ll learn to live like a mouse, searching the cracks in the walls to remember all of the dregs in the crowd you barely recall. You’ve led no celibate life. No skirt while chemicals danced on your head. You stole the keys to this ride; you’re falling tonight. -

‘The Celibate Life’, The Shins, Oh Inverted World (2001). Lyrics By James Russell Mercer.

*** “This is another case of dumbing down. It seems the examiners are trying to be trendy rather than ensure that the exam covers traditional classical literature”, said Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, on hearing that Amy Winehouse’s ‘Love Is A Losing Game’ was to be compared to Walter Raleigh’s ‘As You Came From The Holy Land’ in an English Part II paper. There is not much more to be said about this tenuous distinction between music lyrics and “traditional classical literature”. See Christopher Ricks’s Dylan’s Visions of Sin, Giles Foden on why Eminem is a brilliant th poet (The Guardian, Tuesday 6 February, 2001), search “Akala – Hip-Hop & Shakespeare” in YouTube. If I said that poetry can exist in song lyrics, that the definition of poetry – or in particular, what is poetic – is difficult, and that any use of language which is in any way effective to anyone is an artistic act worthy of at least some critical attention, I would not be saying anything new. Nothing in this essay is new or original. I simply wish to direct some energy of the close-reading of lyrics onto one musically and linguistically brilliant song. One of the definitions of the word “fable” in the OED is “a short story devised to convey some useful lesson; esp. one in which animals or inanimate things are the speakers or actors; an apologue.” This is now “the most prominent sense”. The subject of this song is a woman living “no celibate life”, one that is characterized by

superficialites (the “chemicals” that “danced on [her] head” can refer to hair-dye, drugs, or hormones, possibly but not definitively at orgasm). She is one who justifies her activities with “fables”. The fable is a form in which the non-human portrays the human; in which while no humans are involved, the allegory always points to human experience. The subject’s vision and desires are constantly being characterized by the inanimacy of chemicals: the chemicals of “gold-plated” (the product of a process of electrolysis), and the “chemicals” that dance on her hair. The way in which her “fables” fall before her peers is in the lapse of allegorical interpretation; there is no lesson behind her entirely chemical-based actions. In the fourth verse, we see a certain fable-of-a-fable, a metafable. We are introduced to a different and prophesied fable, the narrator’s fable, where the subject will “learn to live like a mouse”. While her future experience conveys to the lyricist and to us a moral lesson, she is one trapped inside a fable where even other people still retain a fragmented, inanimate or animal form (“dregs” carry on this line which extends from “dust”, “chemicals”, the “legs” and “eyes” of the fragmented body). Her life is always related in terms of a moral lesson (“the celibate life”) which is always absent to her: “no celibate life”. Her own fallen fables lead her to be trapped within another’s, from which she cannot escape. The reason she cannot escape is due to the impossibility of organizing her own experiences, of creating a narrative which she can interpret and learn from as in canonical fable and therefore finish the fable. Anamnesis of a life based on physical experience is as fragmented as the body engaging in them; the experiences of “chemicals danc[ing] on her head” - whether they be drugs, or the hormones of the “four-day affair”, fake tan, or hair-dye – and the unintegrated “eyes” and “legs” give way to their remnants and sediments, “the dregs”. Similarly, her living like a mouse on the floor is already adumbrated in the dust that falls on the floor and “her brown legs”. Sedimentation is strongly emphasized in the song: the “landing” of dust; the eyes which resist “falling” on account of her beauty; the “falling” of the fables; the girls being “always the first to fall off”; the “dregs”; her eventual “falling”. “Remember the girls in the middle | are always the first to fall off” provides us with an interesting image. It allows us to imagine a metaphorical structure of experience – whether a wall or anything else – which upholds a group of people, and those in the middle – most affected by inward pressure – are most likely to be pushed out of the structure, like the subject. The “cracks in the walls” are the outcome of this structure; one in which the subject will eventually have to search within in order to make something of her own fragments of memory, within some structure of experience that was relied upon by a group in the past, but is now worn. We have a necessary coming-to-terms with the earthen, the dusty, the sedimentation that is the residue of the chemical; the broken fixities after a life of flux. by Jamie Patel

The Untouchable Unthinkable There are many things that I’ve been told are unthinkable. Murder. Violence. Rape (I’m not entirely sure what rape is but the news makes it sound dreadful). But obviously they are thinkable because people think them. Then do them. So. On the news the other day I watched an item that described a man who’d kept his daughter in his basement for fifteen years. They’d had kids (the dad and daughter). Those kids had never seen daylight. The reporter called it an ‘unthinkable act’. But I couldn’t help thinking that that just didn’t make any sense. Maybe the man didn’t think about it when he drugged her. Maybe it didn’t cross his mind that it was wrong when he put up wall paper in the annex where he kept her. Or when he put food through the trap door for their dinner. Every night. For 15 years. Maybe what the reporter meant was he couldn’t have thought about it, and have done it. Maybe he put it in a different box in his head. Like when people are ‘absent minded’. Like when I’m talking and I take apart whatever I’m holding; pens, phones, figurines. Maybe it’s like that. So that’s how the unthinkable act happened, and we on our sofas have to think about it instead. We think about it a lot if you’re like me. Dr. Phistine says I’m ‘easily affected’. But I don’t think a man imprisoning his daughter for fifteen years is me being easily affected, I just think about how bad it is. How I’m glad I’m not her. Untouchable. When I was real little, I used to play a game called Untouchable. It was a bit like Tag except if you got touched you had to act out a really dramatic death that was really gory. You stayed dead until the cure man (usually me) came and heeled you. Like Jesus I guess. Although I didn’t believe in him then and I don’t believe in him now. So. In India there was a caste system. There still is one kinda today. Some people are real high up like a celebrity and they’re the best you can be. Then there are a few mid-‐ range like doctors, then teachers then builders. Then there are ‘The Untouchables’ that no one notices, or looks at or smells or speaks to or tastes. They’re nothing. If you believe that if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, it doesn’t make a sound. That’s philosophy though and I’m not really sure if it isn’t just making out how important humans are. Mum used to say it was self indulgent. That people should just get on with life. When I found all that out about India I used to have dreams where Mum was there. I’d scream. Not in fright. I’d scream so she could hear me. I’d scream as loud as I could. And jump up and down, and rub fish on me and put nettles on my hands. But she wouldn’t notice me. It was like she was in a bottle, or underwater or on TV and she couldn’t hear me. It’d be like that I guess, if you were an Untouchable in India.

But then I got to thinking. There would be other Untouchables who could touch you. I even asked Dr. Phistine and he said I was very perceptive. I thought I was just pointing out the obvious. But it made me think it was stupid to call them Untouchable when they could hug, kiss and smell and taste and stare at each other at least. It’d be like being on the outside with friends. All looking at Mum. She was the true Untouchable then. Dysfunctional ‘My pen is unfuntional,’ ‘Dysfunctional’, ‘Huh?’, ‘You said: my pen is unfunctional, you meant to say dysfunctional, you used the wrong prefix’, ‘I did what?’, ‘Never mind.’ A dysfunctional family is one that doesn’t work. Most of the time people mean unconventional, rarely do they mean dysfunctional. Where the family sit or sleep all day, where it’s an empty house or no house because they stop paying bills, or going to work, and everyone’s just beings, even the Grand-‐pop and the kids and the mum and dad. All of them as individuals don’t function. Until they die. If there are problems or you’re just not nuclear that’s different. Real different. ‘Dysfunctional family’ is the kind of thing they put on ads for sitcoms. ‘Watch everybody’s favorite dysfunctional family next Monday, in ‘All Under the Same Roof!’ Right here on SBS.’ Their biggest problem is the dad doesn’t like the mother in law and the mum isn’t a good cook. But they function. They do it with big smiles. ‘I’m unfunctional’, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, I don’t-‐ ’, ‘You do. You’re just sad while you do them.’ That’s when I saw the difference. Unspeakable Here are all the things that I think but don’t say: 1. I’m scared I’ll be like you 2. I don’t want anyone to touch me and everyone to touch me all at the same time.

3. Please stop looking at me like that. I’m fine. Here’s what I always say: ‘I have a tooth ache.’ Dr. Phistine says it’s to ‘deflect’. ‘Why don’t you go to school?’ ‘I have a toothache.’ ‘You’re deflecting’ Sorry. ‘What do you think of your Mum?’ ‘She had a tooth ache?’ ‘You’re doing it again.’ ‘What?’ ‘Deflecting.’ ‘Huh?’ Sigh. Raises eyebrows. Clicks pen. Writes something. Sometimes I imagine what he writes down. Deflects. Can’t use prefixes correctly. Easily affected by current affairs. Perceptive. When I got home I switched on the news man. ‘The girl was discovered because of a neighbor invited to the house by Mr. Fritzl for a drink. Mr. Hurtz said that he didn’t notice anything wrong at all, until he noticed a crack in one of the walls. When he peered closer, he saw a glimpse of the imprisoned family. That chance sighting lead to the rescue of Fritzl’s daughter who is now 30 years old.’ What makes some things unthinkable and some unspeakable? When can I think ‘I want to marry you’ and when can I say it? When can I not think ‘I hate you’? When can I not speak it? When can I yell so loud my lungs sag because I’ve used up all the air yelling I hate you? How do people know what’s an unthinkable act and something just really, really bad? In India they have psychics read your star sign when you’re born and decide where you are in the caste. Your parents pray you’re not an Untouchable. (Unless their untouchable I guess. Or maybe they’d want a better life for their kids than what they had. Unless they liked being Untouchable because it was like when I wear my sunnies and I’m invisible. But I guess no one would want to be like that all the time.)

Imagine that much power if you were a psychic in India. Imagine if you just didn’t go to the meeting, and you didn’t know if you were a celebrity or an Untouchable. Imagine if you were one thing and your parents another and you lived together but had to be separate. That’d be almost dysfunctional if they couldn’t take care of you. That’s what parents are supposed to do. Unthinkable Last week I switched on the news. Last week I ate. I slept. I just did them all sadly. Then, today, I did the unthinkable. I went to school. It wasn’t so bad I guess. But we treat some people as Untouchables and some like celebrities. I’m not sure how we decide though because as far as I know none of us are psychics. I keep lists now. Unspeakable. Unthinkable. Untouchable. Dysfunctional. Unconventional. I also keep a ‘To-‐ do-‐ list’. On the top of the list is ‘smile’ next ‘live’ then ‘un-‐smile’, ‘sleep’. I’ve written it over and over. My family’s functional, we’re just unconventional because we function sadly. Like we’re all in separate castes and sometimes I want to rub fish on me and put nettles on my hands and say ‘I hate you!’ until my lungs sag. But instead I watch the news. At least I’m not in a cellar. At least Dad didn’t forget to think ‘don’t imprison my daughter’. He can forget other things, like Mum. Just never think the unthinkable. Say the unspeakable. Touch the Untouchables or be dysfunctional. These are the rules. We’ve followed them for centauries and they’ve worked pretty well so far, right? So. Gandhi didn’t like the caste system, he thought it was dysfunctional. I did a project on him last week. He was wrong. It functioned. It functioned for ages. It was just bad for the Untouchables. It worked. It looked good to some, but inside it had cracks. It was just chance that someone saw them. Smile. Live. Unsmile. Sleep.

‘The Mistress Of The Animals’: Contrast And Continuum In A Theran Fresco

Florence Smith Nicholls Approximately 1600BC: a volcano on the island of Thera in the Aegean sea erupted, destroying the Cycladic civilisation there. Often referred to as the “Bronze Age Pompeii,” the settlement known as Akrotiri was caught up in this cataclysmic event. Ironically, it was the anaerobic conditions caused by pumice and other volcanic debris smothering the town which preserved it for present study. Thera, one in a chain of Cycladic islands, may be just one sickle moon-‐shaped, seemingly insignificant land mass, but it also provides some of the best examples of Aegean Prehistoric Art. To conceptualise ‘art’ is never a straight-‐forward process-‐in this case I’m specifically referring to wall frescoes in houses, the subject matter of which is hardly transparent in nature. Loaded with ambiguous imagery, the Theran frescoes have been the subject of protracted academic debate since they were first discovered in the 1970s. In order to avoid surfeiting on rhetoric, I will instead approach the subject of Aegean Bronze Age art through a case study of one particular Theran fresco: ‘The Mistress of the Animals.’ It is necessary first to contextualise Thera further both geographically and culturally. The island is often considered to have been linked at least to a certain extent with the Minoan civilisation on Crete, not least because their weight system, syllabic script and similar fresco artwork have been found on the island. However, it is difficult to equate Minoan civilisation, which is known mostly from ‘palatial’ excavations, with the settlement at Akrotiri, the status of which is currently undecided.

Conscious of the inevitably limited analysis and artificial nature of such a pursuit, my study of an individual fresco will hopefully elucidate some of the major themes and issues surrounding the interpretation of Aegean Bronze Age fresco artwork. Theoretically speaking, trying to understand any piece of ancient art is always fraught with issues of imposing anachronistic values onto an image, or assuming that ‘art imitates life.’ Thus, this piece will be highly speculative and should be read as such. ‘The Mistress of the Animals’ fresco, or ‘Saffron-‐gathering’ fresco, as it is often referred to, is located within a building known as ‘Xeste 3’ on Akrotiri. The function of the structure itself has not been conclusively determined, though there are suggestions it perhaps performed a ritual or cult function. In the eastern-‐most section of Xeste 3 there is a ‘lustral basin:’ a square room at a lower level to other rooms surrounding it. Arthur Evans, the original excavator of Knossos on Crete, believed these features to be indicative of purification rituals. However, Evan’s traditional theories have been called into question frequently over the last few decades, and a case in point is that the lustral basin in this building does not have a waterproof floor. The fact that no cooking pots, but small jars containing remnants of food were found in the building, is perhaps stronger evidence of communal activity in a structure which was not residentially occupied. A short description is necessary: ‘The Mistress of the Animals’ fresco shows a female figure, seated on a platform, being offered crocus flowers by a blue monkey in front of her, and being pawed by a griffin behind her. Behind the monkey a young girl or woman holds a basket; she is involved in crocus gathering. The first, and most obvious point which can be made from the fresco is that a clear differentiation is being made between the central, seated female figure and everything else, animal or human, in the scene. Being positioned at the highest point, one would assume she is being designated as symbolically superior. Furthermore, she wears more elaborate clothes and jewellery than the other female figure in the picture. The next step is to identify her: is she a leader, a priestess, a goddess? Nanno Marinatos, the daughter of Spyridon Marinatos who originally excavated Thera, maintains: “That this figure is a goddess is a sure thing.” However, the only evidence she cites for this are the observations detailed above. The nature of leadership, as well as religious leadership, is one of the most contentious subjects in Aegean archaeology. No definitive images of leaders have yet been discovered. Though it is difficult to ascertain the reason for the seated woman’s differentiation, an exploration of possible interpretations of the three other figures in the scene may at least introduce further possible theories. Griffins are often associated with indications of centralised power in the Bronze Age Aegean. The most well-‐known example of this is the fresco with two griffins flanking the ‘throne’ discovered at Knossos. As this particular fresco is much later than the one in question, no direct link can be made, but it is also true that there are numerous other representations of woman associated with griffins, including a gold finger ring from Phourni, Archanes dating to 1600-‐1500BC. This particular example is also concomitant to elite status-‐such an item will have been prestigious. Of course, the griffin is a mythological creature and its inclusion in the fresco is arguably indicative of the seated woman having a preternatural power. Speculation aside, it is also important to note that griffins can be classed as part of the corpus of Near

Eastern iconography. In Egypt, the griffin first appears in Middle Kingdom artwork, and is elaborated in the New Kingdom with a solar disc on its head. The inclusion of a griffin in this fresco highlights questions of possible Near-‐ Eastern affinities and the possibility that the seated figure draws her power from this. The blue monkey also has exotic connotations. Obviously monkeys are not indigenous to the Aegean, so it could be surmised that contact must have been maintained with the Near East in order for Cycladic artists to have had any conception of what they looked like-‐whether in a direct trade in animals or through the diffusion of Near Eastern art. The blue colour of the monkey likely suggests a highly idealised and possibly symbolically significant manifestation of this creature. Certainly, its representation is anthropomorphic. Blue monkeys also appear in the House of the Frescoes at Knossos, which could suggest a common Aegean artistic koine of imagery. Lastly, the other female figure needs to be considered. She is often assumed to be more juvenile than the main female figure because of her hairstyle. Scholarship on this subject has often referred to the Egyptian practise of designating age according to a partial shaving of the head: the young girl appears to only have a short pony tail and closely shorn hair. Within the context of the other frescoes in Xeste 3, this observation makes more sense. The building contains numerous frescoes of woman with various hairstyles evocative of Egyptian equivalents, either involved in crocus-‐gathering or other inexplicable activities. The general atmosphere of these frescoes is one of exclusively female activity (though it should be remembered there are also representations of males in the building). Did Cycladic and Minoan society reserve a special place for certain women, perhaps in a ritual context? Women, specifically young women are very prominent in the Xeste 3 frescoes, but that’s all that can be confidently asserted. An overall synthesis of all the aspects of the “Mistress of the Animals” fresco must be attempted. Themes of Near Eastern influence, female power and the blending of the natural and preternatural world have reoccurred in this discussion. The main point I wish to make is that the fresco can be interpreted along two lines: either in terms of contrasts or a continuum. It could be said that the pre-‐eminence of the enthroned woman is demonstrated through the contrast between her and all the other figures in the fresco, between woman/ goddess and animal, between woman/goddess and young girl. Marinatos’ analysis is strongly along these lines: “The goddess is symbolically separated because her animal attendants are exotic and one is fabulous.” I would disagree: the positioning of the figures could actually suggest a continuum of relations. The griffin and monkey do indeed both appear part-‐way up the tri-‐partite platform the woman sits on. The monkey acts as mediator in offering to the elite, and the griffin is able to touch her. The girl however, is completely separate. Perhaps this is the strongest evidence for the divine status of the seated woman. Yet, instead of construing status from a power over animals and beasts, it could be said that the seated figure is dependent upon these flanking creatures in order to appear superior. In his “Enquiry into Living Creatures” Aristotle spoke of a “continuum between the animal and human worlds” in which humans were the “most complete.” Of course, referencing Aristotle in relation to Bronze Age artwork is completely anachronistic, but I mention him to further

conceptualise a theoretical reading of the “Mistress of the Animals” fresco. Dichotomies can be constructed from the imagery, but I wish to suggest a more inclusive perspective, whereby all the elements of the composition, whether divine, fantastical, human or animal, operate on an inter-‐related continuum which should not be read in terms of straight-‐forward hierarchies. The fresco as a whole depicts a group invested in the activity of saffron-‐gathering; whether mortal, human or not, they are all inter-‐dependent. Bibliography Cartledge,P. 2002.The Greeks A Portrait of Self & Others Marinatos,N. 1984. Art and Religion in Thera Recontructing a Bronze Age Society Marinatos, N. 2010. Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess A Near Eastern Koine Swallow As nightfall looms the swallow shears the air A passenger held aloft by the gloaming The gloaming, an all consuming terror The insect. A turn. A switch. A fatal error. I look with a hungry gaze at an idea in bloom. The last drop of days. The vestiges of life. A soul on the blade of a knife. Poetry shall be elided When creativity and mortality collide. Like the entangled metal of a car crash. The gaping maw of a dying man. I chew through my idle tongue. A holy man walking on fire. A thousand burnt out suns. All things transpire as thoughts peculiar. I swallow, humbled. When the gloaming is born must everything die? Awoken to a new day and a new self The all-‐consuming guilt of survivors. The swallow is the carrier. Carrying carrion, lost souls, across that river of light. The insect skewered by a pin The swallow in a bell jar. Eternal life from the taxidermist's knife. Marc Shalet

by Jonny Bruce

Orchid by Jamie Patel

Lucretius Pendens, poet and his ladyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jester, let his love, like a half-plucked orchid, fall and fester.

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