A saunter through the internet yesterday brought me to a story about the US artist Jenny Holzer and her latest gallery shows in London and Berlin. Holzer has built a substantial career out of using narrative in her images.
Intrigued by the original article off I went in search of other examples of her work. Eventually I arrived at a website containing her earlier work from the late 1970's at the height of punk. 'Truisms' appeared in the form of anonymous broadsheets that were printed anonymously in black italic script on white paper and wheat-pasted on to buildings, walls and fences in Manhattan. Truisms contains a collection of one liners that succinctly reduces far larger concepts and creates differing interpretations.
The above phrase on the Union Jack, 'Absolute Submission Can Be A Form of Freedom' is one of Holzer's. It reminded me of Professor Ted Cowan's comment about wondering when Scottish Unionists gave up on Scotland. Could it be that they've opted for an abeyance on their Scottish responsibilities whilst making the transition from big fish in a small pond to ambitious small fish in a bigger pond? What I mean by this, in a no doubt clunky and difficult to relay fashion, is that in an effort to work within the 'stronger together-weaker-apart' ethos that works in social movements but not to the betterment of governments, they've absolved themselves of duty to their neighbours and shared heritage by the lure of false promises of Unionism. Have they discovered a freedom in submitting completely to the ideals of post colonial Empire and the new neo liberal globalism that the other big boy countries are disastrously embracing?
I stuck the text up on the Union Jack as a provocation to those soft unionists, who are not sure of the next step in the path to normality and to see if they can argue against my contention that adherence to Unionism is a submission to the Westminster establishment and a negation of free thinking and communal ambition for their own folk...
I reckon the following dozen one liners resonate aspects of both the Scottish Independence and the British nationalists mindset:
abuse of power comes as no surprise
calm is more conductive to creativity than is anxiety
dependence can be a meal ticket
government is a burden on the people
labour is a life-destroying activity
low expectations are good protection
occasionally principles are more valuable than people
politics is used for personal gain
revolution begins with changes in the individual
separatism is the way to a new beginning
taking a strong stand publicizes the opposite position
you can't fool others if you're fooling yourself
I may use them on other images. It's what Jenny Holzer would want.
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