I did a video log recently about ‘Public Enemies’ album ‘There’s a poison going on’ and the way it influenced my approach to aerosol writing in the early 00s. It is on YouTube and social media. I met up with an old mate today who was in town with his daughter. He was saying that imagine what would happen to you or I if we hacked into three government agencies but when it’s AI it gets swept under the carpet. All of which is true and nobody really cares or cares to regulate the companies involved.

We spoke about art and surrealism (Kool Keith type surrealism that is) and he left me with a wild video ‘The Kool Keith show – episode 1’ which is funny in its surrealist way rather than classic comedy. It is so ridiculous that it hits you in a creative way. I at one stage was talking about social media being something that encourages hyper production but my friend had a point that in fact it can be discouraging to creativity especially when the pros dominate the output. There are times when fields like model painting for example have so many masters.

Then you want to do your own model painting and the bar is so high in the way the masters have spent hundreds of hours on an effect for example. Then you just end up watching more videos rather than doing the craft. I had a similar story to add after, something my youngest daughter brought up the day before. The way hyper realism becomes a goal in itself rather than the content having the last word. I added to it today in that an artist does a hyper real portrait of an indigenous person.

Wouldn’t it be better if the indigenous people themselves did their own cultural work. Rather than a virtuoso artist creating an expectation and meeting the common dominator of what art should be? We also spoke of when Zap went to the MCA and met the director of the gallery with a demand for a suitcase full of cash and an exhibition. It was an undocumented artwork. I have posted about it before on my website years ago. It is a somewhat unknown event. Was it a moment of inspiration or desperation?

Considering years later he had a pretty good gallery run I reckon it was a very inspired moment. Although some people say he was overlooked because he didn’t have the pedigree the art establishment looks for. A kind of cookie cutter approach for either anti-colonial lightweights, acceptable rebellion or interesting work with a short shelf life. It’s a pretty big list but you kind of have to walk the walk and talk the talk. A lot of people fall short for many reasons.

Then people get depressed because it seems nobody gets them or whatever. Something I came across in the shitstorm that is social media was the way artists can’t survive the quiet times. The times when nobody cares or their attention is elsewhere. These are the defining moments as the noise to signal ratio of the attention economy keeps people posting, and as Chuck D has said all generations become screenagers. Nobody is immune and everyone is addicted to a system that isn’t the noise or signal you need. Can we all survive the quiet times which most of the time is the reality we are in.