Performative Radical
A supposedly left-leaning man (name I forget), scoffed at landscapes and portraits (Guardian in hand), then became rather annoyed with me upon daring to point out the vacuity of a well-known street artist’s ‘protest art’, amid the anti-monarchist chants of equally vapid LARPers performing to a juvenile crowd at another one of those English summer, sophomoric, boutique music festivals (surrounded by its own border wall – the irony!).
I assume, Dear Reader, you’ll likewise feel irked by such insolence.
Rest assured, my intention is not to cause offence but, equally, I couldn’t give a flying fuck if I do.
I have bigger fish
To fry.
Orwell foresaw its manipulation of language,
Kafka prophesied its suffocation of the spirit,
Huxley intuited its stratified numbness.
The 21st Century:
As tediously
Conformist
As it is depressingly
Meaningless,
Pervasive
Elusive authoritarianism
Its genius,
Yet
Many seem trapped in a bygone era
Demanding illusions of subversion
From their artists
Do they really believe deposing vassals of the Goblin King
Would change a fuckin’ thing?
Who shall we topple first?
Trump?
Orbán?
Putin?
Biden?
Starmer?
Macron?
Why not try
Rebelling against
That which sits
In your pocket?
Why not dare
Disobey
The all-seeing eye
Glaring through a screen
That sits before you?
Why not find the mettle
To walk alone
Ignoring
The Spectacle?
Its unreality
Has a much greater hold
Over your mind!
Do not demand of art
If you have not
The
Balls
To
Simply delete
And switch off!
Subtlety
Of imagination
Facilitates
Greater resistance,
How hard is that?
July 2024
© Percival Alexander