#seriously David Fucking Cameron has been made a minister

[i-wear-the-cheese]

Look if I was going to do a like Random UK Politics News generator for the past couple of years I would only need a 4 sided die and it would be like

Letter/vote of no confidence in Tory prime minister

The cabinet has a reshuffle

Serving Tory MP turns out to have committed A Crime

Tories revealed to have done A Bad Thing during height of Covid Crisis

Bonus action applicable to all options: Keir Starmer does nothing

It's not even original anymore. They're just rehashing over 18 months of news with different names and more national incredulity.

When in the FUCK will we actually get to VOTE for our fucking government again!?

[caveartfair]

Tracey Emin’s Unlikely Journey from Vulgar Upstart to Art World Establishment

I Loved You More Than I Can Love, 2009. Tracey Emin Phillips

This week, the flagship outpost of London’s White Cube gallery opens Tracey Emin’s first show of new work in the U.K. capital since 2014. To describe this as a big deal would be an understatement: Along with David Hockney and Damien Hirst, Emin is indisputably one of Britain’s most famous artists, a YBA icon who—in her home country, at least—has well and truly become a household name, the picture of the artist-as-brand. Her work across various media is both deeply personal but instantly recognizable—yet despite its confessional nature, it has become a signifier for a certain kind of luxury consumerism. Her scrappy, Schiele-in-remedial-class drawings of nudes and the hot pink neons of handwritten phrases can be found everywhere from P. Diddy’s collection to the Eurostar terminal at Saint Pancras train station, her cursive as distinctive a calling card as the logo of a high-end fashion label.

As such, Emin’s celebrity could be considered something of an obstacle to assessing the art she makes. If you’re of the opinion that respectability is the kiss of death to artistic integrity, you may well find Emin’s work problematic: As a professor of drawing at London’s ultra-patrician Royal Academy and holder of some ludicrously quaint titles (in 2013, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire), it’s fair to say that Emin became respectable long ago. Indeed, possibly as a nod to her public endorsement of his right-wing Conservative party back in 2009, one of Emin’s neon works, blazing the blandly corporate phrase “More Passion,” took pride of place on the walls of 10 Downing Street during Prime Minister David Cameron’s ill-fated premiership. Nothing, and nobody, can get more Establishment than that.

Tracey Emin. November 7, 2002 by Jason Schmidt, 2002. Tracey Emin Alternate Projects

And yet, for reasons I’ll come to, I will never begrudge Emin the gilded status she occupies in British public life—because, frankly, she deserves it. Twenty years ago, long before she was elevated to the higher echelons of society, Emin was a pariah in the national consciousness. In 1999, she was nominated for the Turner Prize, Britain’s most prestigious art award. Though the financial stakes may be relatively low—£25,000 goes to the eventual winner, £5,000 apiece to the other three shortlisted artists—it is a major event, with the awards ceremony broadcast live on a primetime slot on evening TV. To put it simply, it is the only moment of the calendar year when the wider British public pays any attention to new art—and pay attention they did. Emin’s contributions to the Turner Prize exhibition that year sparked a media furore that enshrined her as the bad girl of British art and made her the target of furious bile.

To be sure, any of the exhibits of Emin’s show-within-a-show would have guaranteed a degree of controversy. There was a punkish tapestry incorporating a crude Union Jack, and some less-than-respectable phrases in appliqué: “They were the ugly cunts”; “No fucking way no”; and, perhaps most memorably, “Pissing pure cider until it rains.” In a small room separated from the main exhibition space, you could watch a truly harrowing film in which she recounted a teenage abortion. More troubling still was her 1995 Super 8 movie Why I Never Became a Dancer,in the course of which her deadpan voiceover relates her sexual history in detail, considered shocking at that time. (“It was something you could just do, and it was for free,” she says at one point.) She goes on to reminisce about entering a dance competition at the age of 15, and when she took to the stage, she was greeted with chants of “Slag! Slag! Slag!” from men in the audience.

In Your Good Sea, 2015. Tracey Emin Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art

But the main exhibition, the one for which Emin was nominated, proved truly inflammatory. As you entered the gallery, you were immediately greeted by the sight of a bed, the sort of thing you might see in an IKEA showroom. Look closer, though: The cover is unmade, strewn with cigarette ash and traces of indiscriminate bodily fluids; empty packs of cigarettes spill out over the crud-strewn blue carpet next to it, while bottles of spirits and mixers stand upright by its foot, arranged surprisingly neatly given the circumstances; on the floor, there’s a pair of beaten-up novelty slippers, which, in happier times, might have been described as “cute.” Also scattered about is the black-and-gold cardboard support for a pack of Duracell batteries; a wind-up dog, of the sort you might buy in a dollar store; and, most sensational of all, a pair of underwear stained with menstrual blood.

Britain has always had a love-hate relationship with modern art—witness the outrage that greeted the Tate Gallery’s acquisition of Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII (1966) in the 1970s—but nothing has sparked polemic quite like Emin’s Turner Prize show and its centerpiece, My Bed (1999). It inspired endless (and largely negative) column inches, hours of TV reports, countless “my three-year-old could do that”–type observations, and some bizarre responses from the public. A pair of Chinese performance artists were removed by security guards after jumping on the bed, while one woman in Wales was so outraged that she drove the 200 miles to London specifically to clean up the mess around it. Emin “will never get a boyfriend unless she tidies herself up,” as she told the BBC. Art critics were as harsh as anyone. In the Daily Telegraph, Richard Dorment compared Emin’s work to “unprocessed sewage”; TheGuardian’s Adrian Searle, normally an open-minded writer, described it as “tortured nonsense.”

Red, White and Fucking Blue, 2002. Tracey Emin Phillips

I know, I know, I know, 2002. Tracey Emin Phillips

This reaction, I think, largely stemmed from Emin’s frankness about sex—not a subject the British have ever been comfortable discussing—and her personality. As some saw it, a woman artist was not supposed to be a loud, outspoken, and unashamedly working-class troublemaker oblivious to the concept of oversharing; less still, as Emin described herself in the video Tracey the Slut (also on show at the Turner exhibition), “an alcoholic, neurotic, psychotic, self-obsessed whinger.” Yet she transcended this barrage of coded misogyny to become one of Britain’s most successful artists, in the process bulldozing accepted notions of what, or—more to the point—who could be taken seriously in a high-cultural context.

From an entirely personal point of view, the 1999 Turner Prize show was a revelation. At age 10, I visited during the school holidays, and what I saw there had an extraordinary effect. I remember very little about the other nominees (12 Years a Slave director and future Oscar winner Steve McQueen, twin conceptual artists Jane and Louise Wilson, and the kinetic sculptor Steven Pippin) other than the fact that McQueen’s Buster Keaton–referencing film bored me half to death. But Emin’s section of the exhibition remains startlingly fresh in my mind.

Faithful to My Dreams, 2012. Tracey Emin Alpha 137 Gallery

At that age, I had only the vaguest understanding of adult life, and sex remained an abstract notion, gleaned almost entirely from the bratty, pornographic lexicon of Blink-182 and American Pie. Emin’s work changed all that. In My Bed, I saw a visceral articulation of what I later learned was known as “depression,” a picture of total emotional paralysis as immediate as any in modern art. But the films were what really worked on me. Suddenly, sex seemed much more than a gross-out joke, something that could leave suppurating open wounds on the psyche: after all, Emin had only been a few years older than my 10-year-old self when she had her first abortion. Nobody I knew, and no film, song, or book, had ever alerted me to the existence of the subjects Emin discussed in her work, and the genius of it was that she narrated it all in visuals and language that even the most incurious of pre-teens could understand.

Most shocking of all, however, was the corresponding feeling that I had lost my innocence. Sitting through the hour-long video reel in the show, I suddenly became aware that I was intruding on something so deeply personal that I shouldn’t be watching. Not that I would have known it as such then, but for weeks after visiting, I was wracked with the weird guilt of the voyeur, and a sense that I had crossed a set of tracks into sordid and unmistakably grown-up territory. We all have warped memories of childhood, but I will never forget the horrible realization that from this point on, there was no going back. It was not the most intelligent art exhibition I’ve seen, let alone the best, yet nothing has ever had such a pronounced, disquieting impact on me. Though it features a return to video work, I doubt her new show at White Cube will leave a comparable impression. But regardless of what she produces, however safe or self-parodic her works become, I could never bring myself to get bored of Tracey Emin.

from Artsy News

[jacks--smirking--revenge]

some thoughts on the general election

well this has been an interesting day! 

i went to bed, and the last conversation i had with my boyfriend after the exit poll was him saying ‘i reckon there’s going to be a hung parliament, theresa may has properly fucked it’ and me being a lot less hopeful. i genuinely went to bed thinking, no, that exit poll can’t be right, we’ve been stung too many times recently by polls. i reckoned i was going to wake up to theresa may gloating about her majority. 

and i was so wrong, and i’m so happy about it! i woke up at 6am to the guardian news blast on my phone saying we were heading to a hung parliament. past the initial panic of ‘oh holy shit’ we don’t have a government, i was delighted. labour had made serious gains. we had said fuck you to everyone who doubted us and brushed us off as a shambles and left wing loonies. the whole debate in the media completely sidelined us and just talked about how well the tories were goin to do. 

the labour surge occured out in plain sight in the streets and yet yesterday, they were still predicting a tory landslide! they seriously underestimated us.

and they underestimated the youth vote. the youth turnout last election in 2015 was 43%. rubbish. no wonder they discounted us as irrelevant. we didn’t fair much better in the EU referendum last year. is it any wonder the tories thought they could count on the grey vote and have the election in the bag? 

and yet, this time round, we showed up and we proved everyone wrong. and i’m so so proud! 67% turnout! that’s amazing, and that has to be at least in part by labour’s amazing campaign to get us registered and voting. there was such a huge effort to increase the youth turnout and it fucking worked! i’ve said throughout the whole election that my main priority was that i wanted the youth turnout to increase and i’m so damn proud. i mean, there’s still work to be done, and i think it largely should start by teaching basic politics in schools and getting people engaged at a young age, and by decreasing the voting age to 16/17. 

it was so telling that the tories did nothing to increase voter registration or turnout. it’s almost as if they don’t give a shit about democracy or ordinary people as long as they stay in power? who knew. 

i just don’t think they really took their campaign to the streets at all. it was all so micro-managed and PR based and media-centric, they forgot about the ordinary people who would be electing them. i live in wirral west, one of the key marginal constituencies, and once which, not long ago, was a tory seat. in 2015, margaret greenwood won for labour with 400 votes. the tories thought it was theirs for the taking, but honestly, they didn’t show up at all. they thought they could take it because they deserved it. 

i had no tory leaflets through my door; no door-step campaigning that wasn’t labour; no idea who the tory candidate was until i looked it up myself. and it showed. in a constituency where normally, at election time, the signs and placards are fairly evenly matched between labour and tory, i saw a sea of red. and it was definitely conveyed in the votes: my MP margaret greenwood increased her majority were she was expected to lose it, by 9.2% to around 9,000.

i have to confess, i may have voted for jeremy corbyn in the labour leaderhip election last year, but i have not always been entirely convinced by him. i was worried that he was going to split the party through his own stubborness, and i love labour more than i like him. however, my opinion changed when i went to one of his rallies. it was amazing to be surrounded by like-minded people all listening to an inspiring, hopeful and positive speech passionately spoken by an honest man with conviction. i came away feeling totally invigorated in a campaign, which at that time, felt like a foregone conclusion. he spoke about the nhs, the arts, affordable housing and an actual living wage to name a few. he ran the most positive and inspiring campaign i’ve ever seen. it was such a juxtaposition against the tories’ mud-slinging cynical and bulliying campaign. 

also, i’m so worried about this coalition/ deal with the tories and DUP. feels like a desperate grab for power by a prime minister who’s just failed absymally and can’t seem to admit it. david cameron didn’t want to get into bed with them in 2010, why is theresa may so keen if not just boost her pathetic numbers. their policies are so toxic and backwards and completely against the way our country should be going. i’ve seen so much about how badly this deal is going to work, so i’m hoping it plays out quickly before the DUP get their hands on any real power. their beliefs are backwards and disgusting. my boyfriend’s mate lives in northern ireland and he’s said be warned they are worse than UKIP......

i just feel this election was so cynically called, as a foregone conclusion, telling people to vote tory as the only patriotic choice for the country. and it has backfired so badly. theresa may has monumentally fucked up and she can’t even seem to realise it. say what you will about david cameron, at least he was gracious in defeat. and now we’re going into brexit negotiations with a deluded prime minister bolstered by a party of right-wing extremists......but at least labour’s made progress!

i should probably stop rambling now. 

[haywire4]

uk election thoughts from a dude in the states

not bothering to capitalize any of this, it’s just stuff that i’m typing as i go and i’m only going back to make sure i spelled most of the words right and shit before queuing up a post

i honestly didn’t expect a labour majority, i figured things were going to be stalled about as they were, but that was a pretty hard shift

seriously, i thought that jets loss to the ravens was going to be the biggest loss i saw tonight

the brexit split really created a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, didn’t it? jezza tries to whip support for it, he probably loses the substantial portions of the electorate worried about the very real damage that could happen to public services and the very fake loss of EU membership prestige.

trying to go for the second referendum, though, that probably alienated a lot of people deeply concerned about the very real issues EU membership causes for countries with names that don’t rhyme with bermany, and assorted jackasses that spend most of their hours concerned with national pride above all else

a lot of people whose jobs rely on calling themselves smart, they’re already taking the chance to tut-tut those who didn’t want labour to be tory-lite, who believe things better than the status quo are possible, would like to try and use this as incontrovertible evidence that leftism is unelectable. please ignore that the wet blanket centrist lib dems have less than 20 seats total and most only got enough votes to successfully split the vote in many areas.

i mean it about the vote splitting thing, i’ve always mocked the people that talk about how dubya “had integrity and honor” while simultaneously cursing the name of ralph nader twenty years on, but the difference between nader and the british lib dems is that those jackasses had quite a visible dent in a lot of demos that probably would have gone labour, same with the brexit party, while nader’s support was built out of people that otherwise would have likely abstained from voting.

with that in mind, sometimes america’s lack of viable third parties seems like more of a blessing than a curse. it’s easy to get hammered by a couple hundred jo swinsons and similar empty suits, less so by the gary johnsons and howard schultzes of the world thinking they’re the next ross perot. would still rather have that ranked choice setup they use down in australia tho.

when contrasted with a prime minister that has written some profoundly antisemetic fiction and his party’s erection of a monument to an MP who virulently hated jews and based her support of hitler off of it, there was sort of a dark humor to the charge that the labour party was uniquely antisemetic. there didn’t seem to be much to it, just the usual protests from people who see palestinians as sub-human but won’t say it, and people who can only view jews as being innately tied to a nationality other than their own. turns out that scaring rich people who own or inhabit high level positions at media companies can get you some really interesting wall-to-wall coverage.

and yes, i did notice that widely circulated list of “suspected labour antisemites“ that was sourced from a group with aryan in the name

that’s a fun preview of what’ll happen if sanders really starts to get traction over here, by the way. you might say, “surely they wouldn’t try to paint a jewish man who lost much of his family in the holocaust as an antisemite, especially compared to a president that’s straight up signing executive orders to declare jews as their own separate nationality“ but the federalist is already dipping their toes into such matters, and many right wing talking points seem to percolate from well funded places like that these days.

also, the people that want to say that a guy who straight up got arrested for protesting during the sixties american civil rights movement doesn’t care about the black community as biden or tiny pete will eat that shit up, and comcast and GE owned outlets ain’t gonna be above saying it in more hushed tones.

apparently corbyn is stepping down as labour leader. it’s been lost to time (or i’m too dumb to remember who said it), but i remember someone saying like, “if it had been sanders taking that kind of devastating loss in 2016, i would honestly have to re-evaluate my politics, figure out i should be playing a role in all of this, if i’m still in touch.“ after three years of various clinton-worlders on doggedly insisting that they are still the only ones that understand how to win elections, corbyn having the guts to step down and say “i might not be the right person to be the face of this movement at this time“ is a refreshing, if sobering example of humility.

big feather in your cap if you’re one to talk about the limits of electoralism, you shouldn’t treat it as an “i told you so” moment, but i guess you did there. hope you have a good backup plan, there might be a good time for it soon

there was a little bit of talk from non-mainstream sources about how american trade deals were going to encourage heavy privatization of the NHS, most of which seemed to be covered up by the insistence of covering the “possibility” (as in bullshit idea) that a story about a hospital hobbled by tory/right wing labour budget cuts running out of beds and forcing patients onto the floor was made up by the parents of a patient. a lot of people asking what copays and deductibles are over in the isles today, even if it’s not going to happen overnight.

sometimes i think a little too much about the possibility of a populace that’s a combination of too beaten down and distracted to worry about the public good and creeping austerity, and times like this really remind you of the necessity of extensive public organizing in your community

another blessing in disguise, i hear a lot about how americans don’t watch the news, but looking at how a lot of corporate news sources twist themselves in knots to look impartial while trying to convince well-meaning individuals that what they’re seeing in front of them in regards to the right wing isn’t real, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. is someone getting their info from NUMTOT or random facebook pages dedicated to cropping and watermarking stolen videos really worse then getting it from ABC or FOX? prolly not tbh

in reality, whatever remains of the uk and eu in 2160 is probably still going to be kicking the can on brexit, basically just turning it into some arcane ceremony whose purpose has been long forgotten. fun!

irish reunification and scottish independence talks sound like they’re going to get real fun now, but i’ll admit i don’t know a lot about that stuff except for the dup essentially wanting the troubles 2.0 in exchange for a coalition with the tories and the last scottish thing getting rejected based on promises of staying in the EU

australia is not the UK but now is a better time than ever to say that fairy bread might be the worst food i’ve ever heard of, anyway peace out, never forget that time that david cameron fucked a dead pig to get into whatever the brit version of skull and bones is