Why is a stock price like a piece of art ?

Why is a stock price like a piece of art ? And on balance, why I remain hopeful about the future of art in the face of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), digital forms and AI.

In a fashion, a stock price in a number embodies all of the reputation, social, natural, financial capital, assets, liabilities and cash flows both negative and positive discounted back to this exact moment in time.  All of the human thought as to what is the “value” of a company’s equity embodied in that moment in time. 

It’s a human construct. Like all money related phenomena it’s based in intersubjective myth or intersubjective trust.  It exists because other humans believe it to have value.

The fish do not care. The sky does not care.  The parrots do not care. 

Natural science does not care about the stock price directly (although if a collapse in price forces a person to sell their parrot, or they buy new parrot food with their profits then at the second order the parrots care; and to the seventh order if the stock prices lead to or reflect a world where Miami is underwater and the fish can swim there - to that extent the fish would care).

There is human skill in its art forms. Some art can only be made by people who have honed their skills for 10,000s of hours, and even then these people may only be almost singular. 

I once met a Kyoto artisan who claimed to be one of the the last 5 hand makers of buckets left., link end.* 

Humans on occasion value this type of art very highly. 

(*It turns out, I think he wasn’t quite the very last. And he was certainly poorer than this other artisan who elevated his art of bucket making even higher.  I bought his bucket for about £100+, the artisan/artist bucket is £1,000s+ )

Some art does not require the same physical skill. Take Duchamp’s toilet urinal. 

Marcel Duchamp's toliet (1917), likely value today >$2m. pic.twitter.com/pJzY3b8he4

— Benjamin Yeoh (@benyeohben) May 28, 2022

For those interested in or wanting to converse in this type of language of art and culture, the toilet embodies many different strands of human thought and values embodied in a toilet. (What is art? Can an artist say anything is art? When are found objects art? Who decides what is art? What is the strucutre of belief and value associated with the concept of art?)* See, link to essay end.

‘I was drawing people’s attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, exactly like an oasis appears in the desert. It is very beautiful until, of course, you are dying of thirst. But you don’t die in the field of art. The mirage is solid.’ (Duchamp)

…Just like a stock price the parrots don’t care except perhaps as a place to perch on or defects on even. 

But the history of art suggests that art works always have a portion of their value in what they represent. The value of Duchamp’s urinal is not in its material cost and skill of labour, no more than the price of most biopharmaceuticals are not in the material manufacture cost of chemical compounds. It’s in the ideas - the intangibles - that such work represents. (And in the case of pharmaceuticals the intangible value of innovation that went into the drug, and intangible value of life extension a drug brings).

The representation maybe be allegorical in the painting, it may be representative of the artist’s life, her skill, what she represents; or the culture of the time, and so on. That is all embedded in the piece of art.  Much like value is somehow embedded in a stock price.

So as art moves digital - and you have a piece like Beeple’s “Everydays - The First 5000 Days”  which sold for $69m in 2021….  The art works means of digital production, the NFT, the work being on the block chain, are only a portion, and perhaps a very small portion of the value of that piece and what it represents. Beeple worked on the piece for 5000 days. 

In this reading, the piece represents the years Beeple spent on his work, the advent of digital art - the culture and presentation of web3.0, and crypto, and all the hopes and dreams of a crypto cyber punk future; expressed in an array of digital pixels.

Until Oct 2020, the most Mike Winkelmann — the digital artist AKA as Beeple — had ever sold a print for was $100.

In Mar 2021 an NFT of his work sold for $69 million. millionhttps://t.co/m4j4SevHgO

— Benjamin Yeoh (@benyeohben) May 28, 2022

Although note as Alex Evans implies this particular selling price might be part of something a little odd and like a scam. That too is the story of art.

source: https://t.co/YhVAprcM3A lets not got back over the yucky scammy world of en eff tees again

— tanh(mmalex) 🇺🇦 (@mmalex) May 28, 2022

The art still means nothing to the parrot. Just like the stock price.

If this reading of art is correct, it partly explains the relevance of cave paintings from thousands of years ago - what they express then, the cultures the art represents and what they express to us now. These bison art are >30,000 years old.

Bison from Cauvet caves, (cc) wiki.

It will also explain the value of art in a digital world. It’s obviously not the pixels we are buying, nor the skill or lack of skill which went into their making; but what they represent to us now and in the future. 

And the parrot still won’t care. 

The Future of Art

The Future of Art… in honour of the effective ideas blog project (which you should check out, link end), I thought I’d spell out an idea for what this might mean for the future, say in 2072. 

My argument is that art will be more accessible to a wider range of peoples because technologies will allow them to express their imagination better without as much physical skill. Physical skill will still be valued as it always has, but physical skill is only a component. (Else we would value the hand made buckets of Kyoto more; and the urinals of Duchamp perhaps less). In many cases, representation, imagination, culture and all those things that matter to humans make up art more. 

I will continue by talking about the now. Computer programmes - AI art makers - have made the creation of complex images possible in seconds.  The image at the top of the blog was generated from a few works “Stock Market as a piece of Art). There is limited physical skill in creating these images. 

But they allow people with little physical skill to express a much wider range of imagination and in that basis create a wider range of art. 

Fast forward to 2072, the technological possibilities will defy our imaginations of today. 

In the same way that most of us in 1972 could not have imagined Beeple’s art, AI art or the regenerative art processes of today. 

Critics might worry about the skill in art. The cave paintings survive. The art of bucket making may be gone by 2072. 

No one is saving the buckets of cedar wood. I am sad we have lost so many of these arts.  So many that there must be thousands if not millions we do not even know of - we almost did not know of the poets of Bengal; we have lost the recipe for Roman cement; the gardens of Babylon are but a dream; no one alive now or in the future will ever see a vision of the pyramids in their orginal white.

And yet, what we gain is more than what we lost and as long as we progress this is ever so. 

The stock price and the stock market is the sum of the hopes and dreams of listed businesses. 

But art is the sum of the hopes and dream of humanity, its culture and its progress. 

And as our life expectancy progresses which is our health; and as our morals and social relationships progress from the end of slavery, to womens votes, to minority and disability rights…

This will be seen in our art. Our arts will reflect our progress.  We will still have the expression of physical skills perhaps not in bucket making, but in something new.

In 2072, we will have technologies that dwarf ones we have now. 

We will be able to voice our thoughts and visual images will be created; animated films will be accessible to many; sculptures that will be the legacy of 3D printing in materials and structures we can not make now.

The sum of art will have grown because the sum of human culture will have grown. 

Some old arts might only evolve. Poetry may have new  forms but will still be poetry. 

Dance might be more accessible as robotic technology enables artists to defy age or physical limitations. 

Performance arts may merge with the digital and find a way to be both live and accessible; and make work that is impossible to perform today. 

Music will still thrive. The future of art will be extraordinary.

There is an unlikely chance we will have the technology to speak in the language of parrots but if we don’t 

the parrots still won’t care. 

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Check out the Effective Ideas blog competition.

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Reviews are weird things for theatre makers.

Reviews are weird things for theatre makers. We give them an oversized space in our brain partly because they become (if we are “lucky” enough to gain one) the comment of record. Partly - we must admit - from some human sin of vanity. There are few pieces of journalism I remember over the years, and perhaps to my dismay, theatre reviews are some of them! I think on this as Arifa Akbar - now chief theatre critic at the Guardian - wrote on how her opinion on a play changed over time.*

In 2003, I watched one of my first plays, Lost in Peru, almost every single night and if you count the rehearsals this probably took viewings over 40 times which eclipsed the viewing of everyone else, even the director. (The actors counting differently.) Performed at Camden People’s Theatre with the sound of traffic drifting through.

On one level, without the play, I would not have met the love of my life (who came to watch the play), it also impacted at least some of the audience who came to see it, taking them places and challenging them to think about matters (in this case torture survivors, also love) they had never thought about in such ways.  This is probably the better measure (and not a measure we can really count), if we should or can measure this form of art at all; and also the development of the artists involved (for instance, designer theatre maker, Mamoru Ichiguru, actor Lucy Ellinson, director,  Sarah Levinsky, who have all gone on to create extraordinary art). But, the play’s most notable written record is a 2 star review in the Guardian by Lyn Gardner. You can read it still*. Why on earth do I remember this, 19 years later?  And am I still  the person she wrote of:

“But, goodness, it is great to see a young writer reaching out beyond his own experience.” 

Perhaps, she reached the truth of it, as I am certainly still reaching out although no longer young.

I think I watched the play so many times for many reasons. I am/was fascinated by the art of live performance, how it changes with audience, performers, time and yourself. How - even as the writer - I discovered new aspects to my own work. Do visual artists ever speak about finding the same - a painting revealing new insights to them as they view their own work over time? And because, underlying I sensed I might never produce theatre work again [I have an intense “day job” managing pension fund money]. And certainly never see this work again.

I was incorrect on not making theatre as in 2007, I adapted a Noh play, won a prize and had Nakamitsu performed at the Gate Theatre.  Here I remember, to the positive, Sam Marlowe’s review* in the Times which probably remains my “best” review still with the quote:

“Rare and Riveting”

Although blogger Travis Seifman* probably produced the most insightful review* [Travis has now been blogging 20 over years, and thus is one of many archives of lovely insightful essays hidden on the interweb] and my blogging friends, Westend Whingers, one of the more fun reviews*.

Nakamitsu sold out and probably touched perhaps 500 to 1000 people maximum. On one level, making fringe theatre a minor art, although quite possibly the impact it had on some of those people may have been great. I reflect that now a single podcast episode* I make is likely heard by more people than who will ever see Nakamitsu.

Marlowe and Gardner are still reviewing, and I am sure artists are still remembering. I happen still to be making theatre! My work still plays to tiny audiences. Thinking Bigly: How We Die has been seen by 80 people [and in some elliptical fate was performed at Camden People’s Theatre* where Lost in Peru was shown - but this time minus the traffic sounds], but I’m told has heavily impacted some.  I may only perform it a handful of times more, or maybe never. At least, I feel I am almost over never having a critic see it. 

The record of note will be in the thoughts and dreams of others.

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Below, Sam Marlowe’s review in the Times, as no longer on the internet except in archive.

Arifa Akbar on changing her mind on a play: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/may/03/theatre-criticism-views-change-and-so-do-plays

Travis Seifman blog: https://chaari.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/nakamitsu/

You will see a slice of Japan if you follow Travis, and discover ideas and art you never knew.

Lyn Gardner’s 2 star review of Lost in Peru: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/apr/14/theatre.artsfeatures1

WestEnd Whingers review of Nakamitsu (in general don’t get friends to review your work, I think!): https://westendwhingers.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/review-nakamitsu-gate-theatre-notting-hill/

(last review by Phil was Dec 2020, I hope one of the last blogs of the golden age of theatre blogging still goes on…)

Bigly at CPT in March 2022, 19 years after Lost in Peru: https://cptheatre.co.uk/whatson/Thinking-Bigly-How-We-Die

Podcasts: https://www.thendobetter.com/podcast

Superblue, A A Murakmai, Silent Fall | experience art

I had a day off and we went en famille to see a piece of experience art. It’s called Silent Fall by A A Muramaki (an art duo).

Art critics hate it because it riffs on an Instagram and what they might view as a surface culture. This misses the point, IMHO, in the same way poetry critics misunderstand Rupi Kaur.  Poet Rishi Dastidar talk about this to me in an early podcast.

It’s expensive (£12) for 12 minutes but the work is a small piece of experiential magic. The experience gives you a few minutes in playful relationship with smoke filled bubbles, in a low lit-mirrored room. You can pop the bubbles or dance them on your gloved hands or clothes.

A distant cousin to Yayomi’s mirror rooms. If art can be colour and light, surprise and joy, if it can be suspending your sense of self or the world then this gives it to you. Sure many other experiences can do this too, and it’s not looking  at, say, at Willem De Kooning’s $300m Interchange (top 3 most expensive art work in world).

Interchange, de Kooing

I can’t recommend it over a wander round the Tate modern, which I would still view as superior art. But as a gateway drug into thinking about what art might be, and as a few minutes where a child can play with a smoke filled bubble in surprise and joy, I’d suggest to try it out.

Dessa, rapper, writer; memoir

I listened to Dessa rap and sing with the BBC Wales orchestra, this month. Her sparkly character glittering about the stage. Her voice has a sensual, draw you in, complex timbre. Her lyrics are complex and playful. She’s written memoir essays about her time on the road, falling in and out of love and the like.

It’s a keen intellect that shines through. One peppered with a life hard and well lived. Touching lightly on mental health and the craziness of forging your own musical path:

She writes in her first essay:

“... Today’s conventional wisdom says that the best way to live a life is to keep all the components partitioned—love, money, friends. You’re not supposed to date your boss, or go bowling with your analyst, or borrow large sums of money from your drinking buddies. We think of ourselves as a store-bought cake with a sheet of wax paper separating all the slices so that they never touch: neat, single servings. But hanging out with Doomtree, it was all one thing—social, professional, romantic. I did all of it with the same people and often at the same time. There were no hobbies and no off-hours, no work-life balance; there was just writing songs and walking to SuperAmerica for cigarettes and drafting set lists and drinking with the guys and making album budgets and goofing off and collapsing into sleep tucked into the leopard print of my boyfriend’s left shoulder. None of it came apart from the rest….”

And on deciding to be an artist:

“...Like a meteor shower, a series of questions flashed through my consciousness at regular intervals: Q: How long should I do this before I give up? Part of the challenge in becoming an artist is that you have to place your bets before you’re fully dealt. You have to assess your talent, still half-formed, and decide what you are willing to stake on it. There’s no best-practice handbook for the pursuit of unlikely dreams. How much of your life should you spend trying to be an astronaut or a fashion model or a professional rapper before deciding it’s time to redirect your energies? A year? Two? Ten?

Some members of Doomtree are genuinely art-for-art’s-sake creative types. Cecil Otter is like that, I think. He’ll emerge from a thirteen-hour production session bleary-eyed and blissed-out by whatever he heard through the headphones. I’ve never been that kind of purist. For me the communication of an artistic idea is fundamental to the endeavor. If there wasn’t someone at both ends of the line, at some point, I’d just want to hang up.

Q: What are the opportunity costs here? I knew that I was capable of making a good living in another field—I had gotten good grades, could interview well, was willing to work hard. If music wasn’t going to be my life’s path, then the time I spent writing songs and bios and press releases might be better spent doing something else—going back to school, or applying for a full-time job, or maybe teaching English abroad, where at least it’d feel like I was contributing. I was a lousy waitress. I was a pretty good tech writer, but couldn’t envision it as a long-term gig. And I couldn’t butterfly forever.

Q: Am I delusional—like, fully out of my damn mind? I’d venture that there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of young women at this very moment who aspire to be the first female president. And one of them will be. The problem is it’s impossible to tell if you’re the one. When small children say they want to be quarterbacks or tap dancers, they’re applauded for their audacity. Aunts and uncles toss a ball around the backyard and buy a little fedora for Christmas. When you are a grown-up who says she wants to be a rapper, the blush is off the rose. The conversation at the Christmas table is more likely to include the words compound and interest than follow and dreams. And it is a little crazy to believe that you can navigate a career path that seems to pan out so rarely. The numbers say you’re almost certainly wrong.

Q: Could wanting it badly enough make it real? This question isn’t about hard work—that’s a prerequisite. It’s about taping blinders to your temples; categorically writing off the critics who don’t like what you do; categorically writing off the counsel of the people who love you and worry about how you’re doing, to insist, I am going to will this into reality. This is the Tinker Bell model. She’s only real because she is clapped into existence. The children refuse to entertain any alternative, and the force of their desire and their determination has metaphysical consequences. The Tinker Bell model is the nuclear option. It taps every reserve. It permits no Plan Bs. It’s bold, reckless, conceited, juvenile—right up until it works. And then, in hindsight, it’s brave, windblown, and scored with strings that sustain right into the commercial break. I’ve known artists who’ve tattooed their hands and faces to ensure they’d have no recourse, no desk-job escape chute…”

I’ve heard artists talk about no Plan B. I don’t know how many burn out - an exploding star.

But those that survive are forged into some alchemical metal.

The above passage is some of her least lyrical more business like writing. Mostly it’s cheeky and funny. Rhapsodic with Street smart lyrical-ness and amazing erudition that her rap-cleverness can’t hide. I’m somewhat in awe and a tiny bit in love. This must be what her audiences feel.

She paints faces (dressed as a butterfly) to make money before her music has taken off. The children ask her:

“...Most days, I fielded the same set of questions: Q: Can I get two? “Unlikely. This line is very long. But if there are no blank faces, come back and I’ll do your other side.”

Q: Are you a kid or an adult? The costume made it tough to tell if I was a giant child or just a parent in disguise. “I’m an in-between.”

Q: If your wings are real, then can you fly? “Kid, nobody can paint while flying.”

Q: Is this, like, what you do? Your job? Well, honey, that one’s complicated. Some days I paint faces. Yes, for money. And sometimes I write instructional manuals as an independent contractor. And sometimes I wait tables at a sports bar downtown. And sometimes I work as a temp for an agency like Dolphin Staffing—which is not as magical as it sounds—but at night, I am a rapper at a precarious point in her—

Q: I saaaaid, is this, like, what you do? Your job? “Well, I’m face painting and you’re waiting to get painted. So is that your job? Being second in line to get face painted? Are you a professional paintee?”

Q: Do you have a boyfriend? I do, but only for a little while longer. He’s becoming a famous person, I think, and there is no competing for first place in his heart because that position was already occupied by music-making when I met him. And maybe the best spot in my heart is reserved for the same thing. But all sorts of people want a piece of him now, including beautiful women who I don’t think he has the self-discipline to turn away. And I am a sizzling mess: angry and jealous and vengeful and sad. That’s the truth, but I can’t share it with you because you’re too young and this is supposed to be a party and I’m being paid by the hour.

Q: Do you have a boyfriend? “How come? Are you single? Are you asking me on a day-yate?”

And like the best heroine-quests she ends…

“...Now, years after that first NPR review and my last face-painting gig, I’ll sometimes stand at the edge of the stage during a Doomtree show. I’ll put my finger to my mouth to quiet the room. I’ll hold my mic off to the side, a gesture that will usually send a round of shhhs through the crowd. Unamplified, I’ll yell something like: “Hey, we’re Doomtree. I’m Dessa. That’s Sims, that’s P.O.S, that dapper gentleman is Cecil Otter, and my guy Mike Mictlan is the hero who thought to grab the case of waters from backstage. Here behind the tables, where the magic happens, is Lazerbeak and Paper Tiger. If it’s your first time seeing us: welcome. If you’ve been coming for ten years: thank you. The reason that seven musicians can play a two-hour show to a sold-out room—even though we don’t have a big song on the radio, even though we aren’t in Sprite ads, even though we write pop songs that are eight goddamn minutes long—is you. Our growth has been slow, and if you’ve been here from the beginning, you know that’s true. But because we make our money in ten-dollar increments at that merch table right there—wave, Ander! That’s Ander—we’ve been able to maintain total artistic control. We don’t have to ask a record executive if it’s a good idea to pick the song with a clarinet sample in 6/ 8 as the first single—of course that’s not a good idea—but it’s good art, dammit, so we’re doing it. Doomtree runs on word of mouth and pixie dust. We are real because you’ve said we are. We’re the Tinker Bell of this rap shit. So thank you….”

Read her memoir essays on Amazon here. So many interesting artists still to be discovered by me. Sign up to me monthly newsletter below.

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Here’s a Dessa song

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Fancy another blog? Zadie Smith Writing Tips here.

Craft: a guide to making Poetry happen

This is not a traditional how-to book. The Editor, Rishi Dastidar (a friend who’s given me an ARC copy) acknowledges that. There are other places for dactyls to land and pentameters to dance.

In broadening what it means to be a poet in today’s world - this messy glocal - global-local - live and digital - multicoloured - multishaped world.

Rishi advocates:

“... I want you to recognise that, to write poetry today, you need to be thinking about more than just your technical, prosodic abilities. How do you perform your work? What about the ethics of using real life in what you write? Can you use technology as a way to push your work to new places? These are ‘craft’ questions, as much as knowing how to get the most out of a sonnet, attempting your own translations and improving the titles you give your poems – all subjects covered here…”

And so expands our notions of craft.  The craft of food, the craft of joinery, the craft of work - life everywhere - are involved in these questions and this book adds wonderfully to these wider challenges. 

It’s a minority art with a perceived lack of minority visibility with an occasional enormous society life changing impact wrapped in an economic paupers cloak.

These poets pack punches and dance jazz while in packed in an essay form. 

As might be expected from poets pithy notions jilting aphorisms open ended contradictory thoughts are all present - in their best sense.  

If you’ve ever pondered writing form and especially how it might not really be working for you - then join a fine company of poets who question this very area and come up with some insightful ideas and provocations.  Perhaps my only note of caution might be the complete beginner into this world may initially be overwhelmed - yet step further and the discussion of form is wide and fascinating. 

Dive into the ghazal - and the ghazal adaptation - challenging when is ghazal not a ghazal, when a haiku not a haiku and the challenges of different linguistically roots. 

Discover the golden shovel…. “Poetic forms can liberate or constrict writers. I’ve found that forms that carry the weight of history, like sestinas, sonnets and villanelles, can sometimes be intimidating. These forms risk shutting writers down before they even start, or make them try to stiffly imitate the masters, most of whom died long before they were born. I’m not suggesting that we don’t try these forms, but I’ve found a new form–the golden shovel–that provides an entry-way to form which is often more accessible and inviting. It promotes creativity, while providing scaffolding by borrowing words and ideas from another writer.”

Learn the tools of the short story as applied to poems. 

Then after form grapple with making..

“...Writing a poem is impossible and once you realise this, you’re free. Rimbaud said that the language of poetry is not brain to brain but ‘soul to soul’..”

With tools to take into the impossible

“...When a poet is willing to risk not-knowing, that’s when something might happen.–Chase Twitchell People talk about the fear of the blank page. Turn this thought upside down–the blankness is the best bit. The blankness is vital, it’s the “continuous I don’t know” that births the poem, the breath that precedes the words, the thin air from whence something can magically appear. You can’t have magic without thin air, and you can’t have inspiration (whatever that is), without blankness, and so our first job, in the writing of a poem, is to resist the temptation to thicken our air with pre-empting, to let go of the need for an outcome. First drafts are entirely about discovery and you can’t plan a surprise. But it’s counter-intuitive isn’t it? Why would you step forward without the certainty of ground? How do we trust nothingness? Unlearn in order to encounter? And how on earth can ‘getting lost’ be a discipline?...”

• Sound 

• Line breaks

• Imagery 

All have significant essays  plus 

• Titles

And there lies another part of the genius of this collection - taking the small details of word smithing of poetry and expanding it the deep levels of practitioners grappling with their work. 

And referencing widely - and why I can’t call a poem Rain.  

Another essay is a notebook - it’s almost like a memoir of the making of a poem - again a different lens into the poem making business 

We go on

• Voice and vernacular 

• Character 

• Translation 

• Technology  (which I feel only starts to touch this area but with many jumping off points) 

• And performance 

As applied to poetry but by now I start to feel this somehow comments and applies to the world today as well as the world of words -

Research / politics (and touching on found poetry)  and on to family and your real life and crossing myth, class, identity  and forms of truth -

In this section of poetry speaking truth to power the essays also speak to a political time in big P politics and small p politics - an intersectionality (referencing the sections of form and making) which is unique to my reading as it weaves a thread from form to making to speaking to politics.

Ending with a set of questions, tips, provocations and exercises - the idiosyncratic coda is a lovely quirky finish. 

This set of essays are modern and current yet speak to traditions of many poetic forms.  Its focus on modern challenges such as technology, politics and performance all in one collection by practitioners flourishing mostly  in the middle of their careers should be a useful source for the early poet or even a fully fledged one who would like to be provoked or reminded of paths not taken or yet to be danced. 

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Order a copy from Nine Arches, 14.99 + PP. Contents below.

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Asian American, published and tours Asia, Winnie Li

Here my friend Winnie Li shares an opinion essay about the types of narratives Western publishers/platforms expect of Asians and Asian-American creatives  - and how work can be perceived differently on the other side of the world. Touches upon identity and the narratives we tell.

“...I am glad my Korean publishers recognized the value of promoting an Asian American female author to Asian women readers, but our readerships shouldn’t be limited by race.  It is truly a shame if Western publishers perceive a problematic gap between the race of an author and the race of a book’s intended readers—because there are readers of all ethnicities in the West, and we are all capable of empathy.  And literature, after all, is meant to transcend such human particularities. As a Taiwanese American girl growing up in the U.S., I certainly identified with characters who didn’t come from a world anything like mine: Scout Finch, Holden Caulfield, Bigger Thomas. And indeed, it works the other way around. I’ve had white male readers say that reading Dark Chapter made them understand a bit better what it’s like to be a woman, who cried reading the scenes of the heroine’s experience of the criminal justice system. So if they can identify with a Taiwanese American heroine, then that’s already one step towards progress….”

https://electricliterature.com/being-published-in-asia-changed-everything-about-my-asian-american-writer-experience/

British Library accepts ASD son’s book

In a lovely and extraordinary gesture, the British library has accepted my autistic son’s book. The Chief Exec took the time and effort to write to him. 

The book doesn’t have classic “literary merit” but it’s made me feel the openness and inclusivity that libraries embody.

If you were to take the book on its own terms, then it uses many techniques of the “found poem” form but also mashes up or enjambs an old folk story trope with modern - hyper-modern even - characters.

In that sense it’s imaginative power is unique. The type of mind and attention to detail plus the repetitive stim of words is atypical in a wide sense.

The illustrations are part of the whole and display a singular vision.

It has child-like qualities in the way that it is fantastical. Yet this echoes Spike Milligan or Borges or Dr. Seuss in playful nonsense.

Perhaps for a moment it allows to think in a way of something other.

There are now two generations of Yeoh in the British Library.  My own work sits there because of the 1968 Theatre Act that requires a deposit of playscripts of all plays performed in Britain. 

What’s a performance lecture?

It’s a form of anti-TED talk.

A genre of performance with roots in conceptual art.

Existing since the 1960s as a subgenre of performance, the lecture-performance or performance-lecture has its roots in the performance and conceptual art of the 1960s, and balances on the boundary between art and academia.

The lecture space becomes a performance space but fuses other disciplines

It’s a type of presentation that goes beyond the academic format of the lecture. Artists (not only visual or performance) use the lecture to turn it into a performance space which fuses aspects of drama and of visual and other media disciplines.

Hybrid it borrows heavily from anywhere else

It’s hybrid nature then often expresses in borrowed hybrid elements such as storytelling, the mass media, internet, adverts, slogans, images, and technology.

It acts on multi-levels to juxtapose and contrast

The performance lecture at its best has varied functions and elements operating on multiple levels. These can form a visual rhetoric or performative actions and artistic non-sequiturs  Techniques of advertising and propaganda or more straight forward education lectures and slides are used to explore the relationship between the image and the text or between consensus and the facts, or contrasting ideas or narratives.

It questions the audience/performer/viewer divisions and plays with interaction

In its artistic investigations the relationship of perception and of understanding, the audience and the performer and performance ideas can all come under scrutiny.

In that sense it is nothing like a Ted talk. It’s almost an anti-Ted Talk.

A TED talk gives you an idea and a smooth talker and tells you it’s the truth.

A performance-lecture gives you a part-idea that you have to complete, challenges you to assess its truth, your truth and the performers truth and like all good theatre can leave you activated and different from when you started.

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An early influence on this genre has to be considered John Cage and his work Lecture on Nothing (see below) which may be considered performance art or poetry or music of sorts.

Robert Wilson staged a theatrical version around 2012. Cage himself gave the lecture around 1949.

In any case from the experimental poets and performers has come this cross-genre form. It toys with more questions and answers and tends to critique all sorts of things. Not a mass media genre and less popular in . the UK - it has distant cousins now in stand up comedy and even YouTube performances to a distant degree.

Here’s a review of a recent Berlin lecture performance.

Contemplating other forms of performance for my sustainability arguments, this type of form seemed to suit and hence Thinking Bigly was created.

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Further reads: Check out my £10K in microgrants for individuals looking to make positive impact.

A blog on listening to legendary theatre agent, Mel Kenyon. 

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times  (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Sorry To Bother You by danhett | a videogame about technology and journalists

Sorry To Bother You by danhett | a videogame about technology and journalists

“When Dan Hett’s younger brother Martyn was killed in the Manchester Arena bombing, he embarked on a trilogy of autobiographical experimental video games about the experience and its aftermath”

Play the game:  https://danhett.itch.io/sorry

Read insightful Guardian review:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/apr/26/dan-hett-indie-games-designer-manchester-arena-bombing

Me: I recall making a moving poem in flash to express the grief and loss I felt, when I used my father’s old shaver (he had died in the last year, now almost 20 years ago) and I believe games and game making art both technology enabled or analogue are an important part of human expression and art.

The review around the game and Dan Hett’s work is lovely.

Climate Change Art, a NY writer's journey.

Climate Signs |  The New York Review of Books

At two degrees, our best-case climate scenario, melting ice sheets will still pass a point of no return, flooding NYC and dozens of other world cities. In fact, we’re on track for over four degrees of warming and an unfathomable scale of suffering by century’s end. For my part, I’m only beginning to see that the question of how to prepare our kids for the horrors to come is collateral to the problem of how to deal as adults with the damage we’ve stewarded them into. What helped me see this was a road sign—one of those LED billboards you normally spot on a highway alerting drivers to a hazard….

Me: The writer provoked by a piece of climate change art embarks with an initially random acquaintance to visit a series of these LED artwork signs around New York. This journey intertwines art, New York, the future, climate, the nature of art and the writer’s life. It’s a long read (20 to 30 minutes, if you stop and think), for me it struck a whimsical note although I can’t pinpoint why - perhaps it was the mix of the personal non-fiction narrative with the art and the journey. Raises many questions and answers almost none.

Emily Raboteau’s piece here: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/01/climate-signs/

The artist’s (Justin Brice Guariglia) work here: https://www.climate-signals.org/the-exhibition