Writing, blogs, and thinking it’s all so oooo 2013, right? There’s a need in me to write things down properly. I miss days of blogspot and tumblr where it wasn’t really about your oresnence but thinking, feeling and sharing often anonymously. I had internet friends who wrote blogs in the US, we weren’t actually friends but we knew each other’s usernames, commented on each other’s posts, shared philosophers, French art house films, artists. That culture could be toxic (don’t get me started on tilblr girl aesthetic circa 2012 as a girl whose never been thin.) Social media now seems so quick, so pointless, so lack lustre.

There’s many predictions made but who would’ve predicted as it feels like the end of days with rolling heatwaves and pandemics we’d spend our days fiimg ourselves dancing, posting blurry moons, and all the while potentially being active in our own demise?  ( I mean I was a 13 year old on MySpace no judgement tiktok generation)

There’s an Ick towards the monetisation of all these platforms, not seeing what you want, not having your carefully curated selection of a feed, not learning.

This was intended to be spouting about why I’m blogging but who knows where it’s going.

I was an active blogspotter, tumblr(er) I loved writing and hyper focusing on special interests.  At 16 I would work a shift in a clothes shop, and then come home and see photography, fashion and blogs of exciting places and people that weren’t stuck in a small town in the north of England. Maybe it’s the process. It’s important to talk through to myself, to reflect back. I don’t think I will share these posts. Just leave them here like little Easter eggs. Surprises into how I really think and feel for those with the know to stumble across on a website that needs a makeover.

Xoxo

Radical for who?

Here’s the thing, right now then…I get so excited when I see something like Radical landscapes at Tate. I want to go, I haven’t been in person, of course I’m one of the rural working class. I don’t get days off to swan off to Liverpool or London. 

I worry about people, you dear reader, interpreting this wrongly. The countryside is such an interesting place, I love much of the work included in the book. It’s the opening text that made me want to chuck it.

The middle class are a big part of society. They have left wing views, they have right wings views and they aren’t afraid to share them or make you feel stupid about yours. (Lack of education tee hee hee). 

“It (The exhibition)  offers the rural as a site of artistic inspiration and a heartland for ideas of freedom, mysticism, experimentation and rebellion.” From the opening Essay by Helen Legg, Director of Tate Liverpool.

The rural IS all of these things but it IS NOT Tate’s place to be offering up a place (It’s not anyones). The rural has a problem, a swelling uprising of middle class elites both liberal and let's say not- so liberal, wanting to pack up and move for a better life. Not the life people actually live in these places. They sit on local board meetings after two weeks of moving in and want to change everything because everyone is soOooOoo uneducated and backwards here. (The life often doesn’t fit with their dream and they want to change it). In that opening text it reads as though this is the place for artists to do what they want. It doesn’t really speak of peasant revolts, of rebellions, of trauma of the landscape, of manual labour. That it can be hard, fuel poverty is rife, theres a ‘Heat or Eat?’ mentality, people work multiple jobs often seasonal, often for less then minimum wage, travel is a must, or that hospitals are an hour away . . . It is also NOT a perfect place. Like in towns and cities across the UK there are opinions and lack of care towards diversity and inclusion, a real misunderstanding and misplaced fear or dislike of what people like to call ‘Wokeness’ (I’m still not sure what that refers to, surely its better to aware, awake than asleep?) There are elements, factors, people whose behaviour and views I find difficult. Class is mentioned in the book, briefly, but seen as an outside experience. I find this odd anyone who has spent 5 minutes studying rurality could place the working classes at the heart of rural experience, the migratory trends, and the industrial revolution.

It talks about “who has the freedom to access, inhabit and enjoy green spaces.” Whilst not really looking for artists who have struggled to live in them and don’t have the freedom to make work. Many of my favourite artists are in the show, who have made groundbreaking work about these issues. Green spaces can be isolating and hard to access, unfriendly places. That work is important. 

There’s this big chunk of contemporary issues missed out. Is that subconscious, a misunderstanding through lack of lived experience, or purposeful and harmful? The whole exhibition is based on the idea of a dream of a place to do whatever you want to and that no one will suffer from that. On reading that first page my excitement wilted. That anger, and disillusionment rose up. Yes this is a place to (🙄 wild) swim, to walk, to make, but it is also a place people work, live, love, and grow. It feels at odds with the liberal vision to expel and ignore these landscape stories. Is that because they are built from neoliberalist agendas and do not care about those who suffer at the hands of that?  Is it so much to hope, and such a demand that we look at issues from a lived experience POV even in a small way, a tiny chapter in the book? 

This opening text. It brings important often unconsidered aspects to the table. It also champions the idea of working class erasure, let’s rewild rural Britain and get rid of all the poor folk who live in fuel poverty. The countryside is not just an empty green space. People live and work there. Too often I see this complicated debate as town Vs Country but there’s so much more to it than that. Slowly pushed out to some edge lands town because this idea of a green and pleasant land is only for the few not the many. The few that can afford to up and move. To commute. To fly for meetings (ironic). To work from home. The few with opinions and voices much louder, more well spoken and therefore more important.  The few on both sides that have more in common than they think.