Do you remember this tile?...

Do you have a personal memory/story/connection relating to the H&R Johnson ‘duck’ tile – ubiquitous in UK bathrooms through the 70s/80s and beyond.

It became known as the ‘duck’ tile as, most commonly, people would say they could see the shape of a duck in its coloured veins and shapes.

Me and Tom Goddard are collecting stories about these tiles for a zine. If you have a connection - no matter how small, strange, or seemingly irrelevant - we want to hear from you.

Please do get in touch with me or him and share this call out amongst your friends.

To bear witness...

A couple of months ago I went to a reading by the poet/writer Patrick Jones. After one particularly emotional poem, Patrick talked about why he wrote it and his need to use the poem as a means to bear witness. The poem was about something he could do very little, but what he could do was write his poem to bear witness. I’ve never considered this idea and this phrase in the depth I have since that reading.

I’ve spent most of my life fairly consumed by a feeling of impotence - impotence in my ability to push back against the existential fears that lurk in every corner, impotence to tangibly effect change on the injustices and inhumanity I see in the world. An impotence to do anything to change the bad stuff for the better. And Patrick’s statement and sentiment made me rethink this completely.

That feeling of impotence stems from an inability to effect a tangible impact on these huge things. But we can all bear witness. We can all write our poem, do our drawing, or make our voices heard digitally and face-to-face. We can all mark our distaste, our horror, our disappointment, our sadness, in these seemingly small ways, and bear witness.

We can acknowledge to the world that these things aren’t ok through these actions and, whilst they don’t immediately change anything, they bear witness.

To put this in a wider perspective, I’m no scientist but I accept that the conservation of energy is an absolute law. This means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form. This means that all the energy that will ever exist is already in existence. But what does this have to do with bearing witness? It’s maybe more philosophical than practical, but humour me.

You’re faced with a choice of feeling impotent and doing nothing, or doing a small something and bearing witness. In bearing witness you’re harnessing a small amount of universal energy and pushing back against this massive thing. If thousands or millions of people bear witness, that becomes a huge amount of energy being harnessed to push back against these seemingly insurmountable things.

Also, universal energy and cod-philosophy aside, you are an active participant in the history of the future, whether you like it or not. History can’t access the lost conscience of a billion dead souls. When you bear witness it can be taken into account and create a history of empathy and resistance, rather than apathy and, at worst, collusion.

Of course we can all do more than this. I’m not advocating we just engage in small acts of bearing witness, but when impotence is crippling, it’s somewhere we can all begin. So in this most basic form, I’ll start…

I bear witness to the horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s sickening that in these developed times military conflict is ever used.

I bear witness to America’s Supreme Court ruling on abortion. How can we possibly still be faced with a small group of (mostly) men making decisions about the rights women have over their own bodies.

I bear witness to the wholesale shakedown of the UK by a government acting more like a mafia than a body elected to represent its people.

And I bear witness to the loss of love, respect and empathy for those less fortunate within our society, and those looking to enter our society, that seems to be sweeping the privileged West.

Of course, there’s so much more.

We must bear witness, because we can.

Today, it’s sunny

That title is true. I’m sitting in my front room looking out on to a slowly-waking suburban street in Cardiff and it’s sunny.

Part of my day’s workload is to spend a good while in a dark and dirty loft figuring out how to board it out so I can empty a storage unit I keep across town. The unit costs me £100 a month - £1200 a year - and it’s full of artwork and art-practice related stuff, barely accessible as it’s so full, and most likely destined to sit there, unseen, for an indeterminate amount of time.

But it’s sunny outside right now.

This has got to be one of the biggest ‘problems’ of being an artist. You make all this stuff, you show all this stuff, but then you have to store all this stuff. If only it was as simple as - make the stuff, show the stuff, sell the stuff. But the commercial art world doesn’t work for most artists. It’s what they never (used to?) tell you at art school - the commercial art world only really works for galleries (and surprisingly few in real terms) and even fewer artists (and don’t assume it’s working for all those artists named on a gallery roster, because most of them aren’t selling a thing). But people talk about this tiny slice of the art world a disproportionate amount as it’s where the big bucks get generated (by a few people, from a few people, for a few people). I’m aware that without hearing the tone of my voice that might sound bitter, but it’s really not. I’m lucky enough to have worked a bit in that world and so had the chance to figure out my relationship with it.

But today, it’s sunny outside, so I’ll not think about all that.

Part of my plan is to empty the unit and put all the stuff in the loft, but archive it at the same time, and give some of it away to organisations I’ve worked with for their own archives. And also, in the process of archiving it, sell as much of it as possible - artwork, kit, materials, the lot. There are works I made nearly 30 years ago in there, alongside PAs and smoke-machines I’ve bought for various projects. And it’s all just sitting there, costing money to store.

I took the unit on about 4 or 5 years ago when I moved out of the last studio I had. I moved out of my studio as it was hosted by an organisation that had shown itself to not really care about the people who had made it so interesting in the first place. This isn’t a unique story, but it’s always sad. So I’ve been studio-less since then, working on site and in my house since that time. You’d be amazed (maybe) at what you can get done in and around your house. Amongst other things I’ve made a series of old-master style still-life photographs of food for a book of fiction, an album cover, engraved a guitar, and completed a road movie (I just edited that at home, so not such a strange home-based task, but worth a mention). I actually think a really useful route to creativity is restriction or limitation of some sort, whether that be physical, material, whatever. By placing constraints on something it gives you useful parameters within which to be as creative as you can. But I digress…(and will almost certainly come back to this point another day).

It’s been a strange week overall. Something new that I was really excited about has turned out to not be so exciting, but I’ll figure it out. This kind of falls under the restriction/limitation idea. When something turns out not to be what you thought it was, you can view it as a different set of constraints to squeeze something of interest and use out of. It’s what we, as artists, are best trained to do, right?

And it’s sunny outside,

What can we learn from Jackass (the movies)?...

Yes, I agree. It’s a ridiculous premise to begin a piece of writing that has any pretentions of being serious, but I mean it. There will be a host of caveats throughout this but stick with me.

I went to see ‘Jackass Forever’ yesterday. The fifth in the series of movies that emerged from the TV series. Mostly I’m going to assume you know what Jackass is, but for those that have no clue, it’s a bunch of people loosely affiliated to the skateboarding scene doing a bunch of stunts and pranks on each other, where physical harm or fear is the primary intention or outcome. It started out as an MTV series in the 90s and inspired other similar programmes, probably most notably ‘Dirty Sanchez’ in Wales – again, skateboarders hurting each other in various imaginative and brutal ways. I’m not a TV historian, but to me it comes from a lineage of programmes such as ‘Banzai’ (which itself comes out of a history of Japanese game shows) and the segment on Channel 4’s ‘The Word’, called ‘The Hopefuls’ where people would do various shocking or humiliating things after announcing, ‘I’ll do anything to get on TV’.

I loved the Jackass TV series and I’ve loved the movies. I’ve never tried to be analytical about this love, partly as I’ve just always enjoyed this stuff. ‘You’ve Been Framed’ has been a part of my life as long as I can remember (and I think we can all agree it reached its absolute peak in its final years with Harry Hill providing the voice over).

In terms of Jackass, the movies really do lift it from the TV series. There are the big budget opening scenes, the high production values, and the clearly more expensive stunts and japes. I remember sitting in the cinema watching ‘Jackass 3D’, genuinely marvelling at what a time it was to be alive – in terms of technology – as I got to watch, in 3D, as Bam Margera urinated off the top of a caravan on to one of his unsuspecting co-stars, all filmed by a camera taped to his penis.

Of course, there are lots of problems with Jackass too, which I’m not going to try and go into here but, yes, it IS very patriarchal – a bunch of boys/men fooling around with no consequence to their actions other than physical harm (notably, a woman – Rachel Wolfson - has joined their ranks for this latest film. The most ‘2022’ moment in the film happens when a scorpion falls from her face on to her chest and in response to her calls to ‘get it off’, Chris Pontius replies that he can’t until she gives him her consent.) It has traditionally been a bunch of white men engaged in this tomfoolery but, again, in this latest film some of their new friends and stars that make an appearance are Black. I’m not interested in analysing whether these are conscious decisions or not, but the fact that even Jackass appears to be responding to the times we live in can only be seen as a positive thing. Lastly, it can also be accused of simply being dumb; a bunch of people doing nothing but hurting themselves and each other for the amusement of themselves and others. But then, is that not OK? Is it not just clowning taken to a logical extreme?... (and is something I’ll come back to in point 3). All things for discussion by people more knowledgeable than myself.

The day that I went to see ‘Jackass Forever’ also happened to be the day after Russia invaded Ukraine. And this brings me to my first real Jackass-positive. I’d been meaning to go and see the film for a while but, thankfully, hadn’t made it. I’m a child of the 80s. A product of the Cold War. I grew up genuinely believing that I would be incinerated by a nuclear blast, and those fears have never truly gone away. So the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, causing all those childhood anxieties to come bubbling back to the surface, felt like the perfect moment to go in search of pure escapism – which is what Jackass is. There’s no narrative. It doesn’t request that you think deeply about what’s going on. Equally, it’s not a passive experience. On some level you’re an active participant in the action on the screen. Just by being there, laughing, groaning and wincing along, you’re part of it. There’s an almost real-time transference of the agency and intention of the stunts into the cinema where you are. This isn’t just documentation of a bunch of stuff that’s happened, it’s a spectacle. You can feel it in the cinema itself. The others there are groaning and wincing and laughing along with you. That rarest of things happens and it becomes a shared moment between strangers. The singular act of going to the cinema becomes communal. We were no longer a bunch of individuals who happened to be in the same space, but a collection of people sharing in an experience, together, and not alone. (I’m aware some might disagree with my position on this but, in general, I find cinema to be a very solitary experience, even when it’s full. Despite being surrounded by other people, I don’t feel like I’m sharing anything other than the space with them. It’s just lots of people all having their own experience in the same room. This Jackass experience felt different. As though I could have turned and spoken to any of the others in the cinema with me and it wouldn’t have felt weird or intrusive.)

And this brings me on to the first main point I wanted to make. What can we learn from Jackass point 1:

There’s value in the tribe.

A long time ago I read Sebastian Junger’s excellent book ‘Tribe’. After watching the film yesterday, I’ve started reading it again today. ‘Tribe’ is an examination and rumination on the role of the tribe in human society. I don’t think it’s of any question that humans are fundamentally a tribal society. Junger’s book takes a psychological and anthropological look at the role tribes have, and still, play. He examines how society today is constructed in such a way as to make being in a tribe, and all the positives that come from its societal management, almost impossible. I’m massively over-simplifying things in making this statement, but that’s essentially one of the things you’ll see being discussed and examined in the book. 

After reading the book the first time (I guess about 10 years ago), I became very aware I was no longer in a tribe. The book enabled me to identify that I HAD been in tribes before, and by ‘tribe’ I don’t mean ‘gang’; I mean a supportive collection of people who had a common bond and commitment to each other, to support and protect one another and work for the good of the group, as well as the fulfilment of the individual. The first time I experienced this was in my mid-to-late teens as a wannabe rock star in Margate, Kent. There was a vibrant and supportive network of bands and musicians in the area at the time, working together to put on gigs, geeing each other along with (mostly) friendly competition and rivalry. Over time this extended nationwide as we gigged wider afield and became friends with other bands in similar tribes across the UK. Of course, I didn’t view it this way at the time. I just knew I was part of something bigger and more important than myself, that was challenging, fulfilling and communal, all at the same time. Suffice to say, some of the best friends I have today, nearly 30-years on, are some of the people from this original tribe.

The second time I experienced being part of a tribe was ten years later in my mid-to-late 20s. I was five-years-or-so into a career as an artist when I began working with an arts organisation based in the Lake District called Grizedale Arts. It was a pretty magical moment in the organisation’s development where a new director had come in, Adam Sutherland, and turned everything on its head. He wasn’t interested in sculpture trails in forests, he was just interested in putting interesting artists from any background in a forest and seeing what emerged. They had an old BnB called Summer Hill where visiting artists used to stay. It was in the middle of nowhere, so you’d pitch up there and just have to get on to with anything up to 10 or 12 other similarly disorientated artists who might be there at any given moment. Grizedale’s projects were messy and chaotic and fun and real, and made you aware you were part of something bigger than yourself; your individual input was important, but it was just one part of a much larger organism. There were no stars. You were all just part of a communal endeavour. To say that’s a unique thing in the artworld would be a huge understatement.

Again, on a national scale, I had artist-friends in most major cities in the UK. I could be confident to show up at an opening or event pretty much anywhere and there would be people there who I knew or had met, or who knew someone I knew. Everyone seemed to be existing in that same way – part of an extended tribe, ready and willing to extend the hand of friendship to anyone they knew, or who knew someone they knew. We were all part of something bigger than ourselves and there was value in being an open and active participant in that thing.

And I see that, on a smaller scale, in the Jackass films. They’re a tribe in this sense – a group of individuals engaged in a collective endeavour for the greater good. One individual’s pain is a sacrifice to the tribe and their communal endeavour. There’s evidently a love and respect between these individuals that runs deep. In many ways that’s unsurprising, as they’ve been working together in this way for the past 20+ years now (and were presumably friends before that point). And it’s of no surprise that Jackass came through the skateboarding community. The skate community are a tribe very similar to the one I’ve described through my experience of music. Anyone who’s ever been a skater will tell you the same thing. It’s an extended family of-sorts (in a good way), where doors are always open, and floors are always available to sleep on. It’s also a pursuit that takes focus and presence…

Which brings me on to – What can we learn from Jackass point 2:

Being present and in the moment.

The proven medical benefits of mindfulness and meditation are givens now, aren’t they? If you’re still in the camp of thinking they’re just hippy-shit, you’re probably not alone, but I’d also strongly recommend you go and do a bit of reading around it. I don’t mean that patronisingly, I’m doing you a favour. There’s an amazing thing in the world that will make you feel better than you do now, for free, that you’re not accessing yet. I’m no expert (I’ll use that qualifier about pretty much anything other than 80’s UK Thrash Metal and public art) but you could do worse than read one of Ruby Wax’s books (yes, the comedian from the 80s. She went to Oxford and got a Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy Masters, and really knows her stuff. She also talks in terms of evidence, not opinion or perception) – ‘Sane New World’, or a ‘Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled’ are probably good places to start.

Again, I’m not here to sell you mindfulness, but I am talking about the value of pursuits that place you unavoidably in the moment. We all spend so much time thinking about the past and the future that the precise moment we are living, barely gets a look in. There are all sorts of things other than meditation that can bring that about for the individual. I can only talk from personal experience and I’d list surfing, skateboarding, drawing and playing the guitar as four things that do/have done that for me. 

I started to learn to surf sometime in my 30s. I’d skated a bit in my teens and had got back into it around the same time I decided to try surfing. The first time I ever surfed was at Watergate Bay in Cornwall. I had a short surf lesson and was then told, “Right, I’ve told you pretty much everything you need to know at this stage. Now just go and practice”. The conditions weren’t great that day – the waves were quite large, fairly choppy/messy, lots of white water etc, so it made it really hard for a new surfer with a foamboard to get out any distance at all. But I spent a couple of hours just trying and failing (both in terms of surfing and getting out through the waves) and at the end of those few hours, exhausted and happy, I also realised I’d not been thinking about anything else – at all – whilst I’d been in there. In a good way, I wasn’t capable enough at what I was trying to do to be able to do anything other than concentrate 100% on the job at hand. And that’s never really gone away with surfing (partly as I’ve never massively improved). As I say, skating, drawing and playing the guitar are much the same for me – things where my mind rests quite easily in a place of total concentration whilst I’m doing it. It’s pretty magic.

And so back to Jackass…

They’re totally ‘in’ what they’re doing. Johnny Knoxville in a rodeo ring, waiting to get hit by a charging bull isn’t thinking about anything other than what’s happening at that exact moment. Dave England and Sean McInerney aren’t thinking about anything else when they’re in a pitch-black room believing there’s a deadly rattlesnake loose in there with them. I’m not suggesting for a moment that you need to put yourself in danger to achieve this state. More broadly I think I’m comparing the act, for them, of making these films and programmes as a mindful act. The individual stunts are mindful acts in and of themselves, but that decision to come together to make a new film or programme could be compared to someone else’s decision to go on a mindfulness or yoga retreat. The value of being here, now, can never be understated. That thing you’re worrying about in the future – it probably won’t happen, and if it does it won’t play out how you think. That thing you’re worrying about in the past, it’s probably only you that’s worrying about it. There’s that wonderful idea which I believe to be Buddhist wisdom...

“If it can solved, there’s no need to worry, and if it can’t be solved, worry is of no use.”

And finally – What can we learn from Jackass point 3:

They’re having fun.

This is obvious. Despite the pain and fear, the people involved are clearly having fun. Some of it might appear a bit forced, but I really don’t question that it’s (mostly) real. I mean (other than the money), why keep coming back over 20 years if you’re not enjoying it? And, in terms of the money, I think we can assume they’ve all made enough money off the previous movies/programmes to not have to do this anymore if they really don’t want to. So, it must be fun. Which taps into my earlier comment about it potentially being seen as dumb. And if it IS dumb, then so what?...

I’m not a believer in guilty pleasures, and by that I mean I don’t believe anything should be seen as a guilty pleasure. If you like something, it’s just a pleasure. You don’t need to feel guilty about it. Of course, I’m taking the phrase in its most commonly used way, such as liking a low-brow TV show being classed as a guilty pleasure. I don’t mean that if you like killing small animals, this is simply a pleasure and should be enjoyed. The caveat to anything I say about this is that if no-one else is getting hurt (or is agreeing to getting hurt), then it’s fine. Fill your boots. Just don’t cause unrequired or unrequested pain to anyone or anything in your own pursuit of happiness.

So, they’re having fun making these things. We all deserve to have fun, in whatever way works for us. To quote the mighty Kurt Vonnegut...

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

I had a genuine moment of exhilaration in the cinema when I engaged consciously with the thought of how much fun they appeared to be having. To risk clichés - life is short and we spend too much time worrying about things that simply don’t matter. There is time for more fun, even if its pretty fleeting. There SHOULD be time for more fun, as most of what we do the rest of the time doesn’t actually matter (yes, brain-surgeons blah, blah. Don’t @ me.) What I’m saying is a lot of the things that I know consume my head space really don’t matter. I’ve spent way too much time thinking that space or contentment will emerge in some magical collision, but they haven’t, and they won’t. And if you spend too much time waiting for the right conditions to do something, you’ll never do anything. So work out what makes you happy, what you see as fun, and go and do more of it.

And that’s largely it. What can we learn from Jackass? – the value of the tribe, being present, and having fun. That’s what we can learn from Jackass. And I’m not joking when I say that either. These films are a joyful celebration of the potential of all those things at work.

Postscript

One unresolved question I have, which is not specifically Jackass related, but does relate to the subject of the tribe is:

Can a tribe be scattered?

We know it can, on some level, from what I’ve said above about the art scene I found myself part of in my late-20s. But what I’m really asking in this question is whether it’s possible to be part of a tribe that you rarely see? Is close physical proximity, regularly, a necessity for a tribe to exist and maintain its essential being?

For example, I don’t know if I have a tribe anymore. In many ways that statement is a contradiction, as if I don’t know if I have a tribe, then I don’t have a tribe, right? It surely can’t be possible to be part of a tribe but not really know it…

That said, I’m keen to consider this further. In real terms I still have members of both of my previous tribes who are unquestionably there for me whenever I need them, as I am for them. Some of them I’m in touch with every day, via WhatsApp or other digital means. Others I might not see from one year to the next, but occasionally share texts and calls with, and when we meet it’s like we’ve never been apart. And there are new members too. People I DO see in person regularly for different reasons.

But does this amount to a tribe or is this just a disparate group of old (and new) friends - more of a support network than a tribe. At this point I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. I wonder if for a tribe to really function as a tribe there needs to be a common interest or goal (primarily the wellbeing of the members of the tribe, but also, in my experience…) this often coalesces around a common interest or thing; music, skating, art etc. Something bigger, even, than the tribe itself. I don’t know. But I’m very interested to talk more about this stuff to anyone that’s interested to.

Mark recommends...

Happy new year/blwyddyn newydd dda i chi/to you! Hope everyone had a good holiday break (if you had one).

Mine gave me a bit more time than usual to watch and read things so I just wanted to make a couple of quick recommendations…

First is the Elliott Smith documentary - ‘Heaven Adores You’. It’s a really beautiful and informative portrait of a man and his music. I came to Smith really late (about 5 years ago), despite having been taken to a tribute night to him in a bar in New York, by Emily Wardill, back in 2004 to mark the first anniversary of his passing. As I recall, it was an enjoyable night of music, but the importance of it somehow passed me by completely. Anyway, if you’re in the same position of having not yet discovered this incredible musician, you could do worse than watch this documentary as an intro.

From the sublime to the ridiculous (no offence), I highly recommend the ‘Rammstein: In Amerika’ documentary. Much like Smith, this is a band that had passed me by until recently. I’ve known OF them, obviously - it’s impossible not to. I’ve just not listened to them or paid them much attention. But this documentary is ace. And now I REALLY want to see them live (I was talking to a mate about this who casually mentioned that he saw them at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York back in 1999!)

Then a third documentary I’ve just watched is ‘Moments Like This Never Last’ about Dash Snow. I’ve always been interested in Snow and liked what I’ve seen of his work, but I’ve also been guilty (I think) of falling in to being a bit dismissive - believing the ‘well, he was just another privileged kid playing at being gritty wasn’t he?’ rhetoric. This is another documentary that does a good job of unpacking something of the mystery around someone and just showing the vulnerable, messed-up, creative, individual with a drive to make stuff. I’m inherently drawn to anything DIY and, so far as we can see from this film, his career was genuinely built on a DIY approach to making, until such a time he got swept up by the machine. Inspiring and sad in equal measure.

The last two are books (Xmas presents, unsurprisingly).

The first is Bob Mortimer’s autobiography, ‘And Away…’ We all love Bob Mortimer, right? What a beautiful human being. It’s a funny, engaging, fascinating insight into the journey he’s been on. It even made me go and watch his fishing programme with Paul Whitehouse, a programme I’d avoided up until now for various reasons. I pretty much exclusively read autobiographies/biographies, and many turn out to not be that interesting, but this one is great.

Finally, DH Peligro’s, ‘Dreadnaught: King of Afropunk’. I feel like I need to preface this recommendation with a warning - it’s not an easy read. It’s a very honest description of a life that’s seen the lowest-lows of drug addiction, which can make for some pretty tough reading. But the fact he’s been so honest in it is to his credit. For those that don’t know, he was the drummer in the Dead Kennedy’s and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (amongst others), so has had a really interesting life musically-speaking. One of the things I found fascinating is how little those bands realistically feature in the book, as they were always something happening in the background to his addiction. Anyway, a fascinating read.

(…an aside. I had a chance to buy this book from the man himself in a cafe in L.A. The last time I was there, another friend was doing a reading from her book as part of a night of readings by punk musicians and he was on the bill. He was great. And honest. And engaging - just as the book is - but I was too star-struck to go and buy the book from him. So it’s taken me another three years to finally get it and read it).

There we are. If you’ve any recommendations, feel free to leave them in the comments.