fine art
Zaar Riisberg // Streets of Aalborg
Henrik B. Clausen // Benched // State of the World VIsual Address #2
A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.
The second one is a shot by Henrik B. Clausen. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. HBC is a film director and videographer from Denmark.
For more on HBC check his Vimeo
Check out #1 here
Martin J. Sabine // Boris Johnson "Class" Clown
Imagine if you will Boris and his "Bullingdon Boys" talking of jolly japes guffawing out loud at their outlandish behaviour their collective arses covered by their privilage, trashed restaurants, hotel rooms and pigs heads notwithstanding is this really the acceptable background and remit for someone to run the country.
The characteristics he displayed at Oxford – entitlement, aggression, amorality, lack of concern for others – are still there, dressed up in a contrived, jovial image. It’s a mask to sanitise some ugly features. They "the boys" treated certain types of people with absolute disdain, and referred to them as ‘plebs’ or ‘grockles’, and the police were always called ‘plod’. Their attitude was that women were there for their entertainment, to do with them whatever they wished. Among them was the former Prime Minister David Cameron and George "Austerity" Osbourne a fine bunch of individuals? Well I leave that up to you to decide.
Johnson's total lack of morality and his penchant for lying is excused by those around him as "Oh it's just Boris being Boris" Really!! Portrayal of him as an irrasicable charmer running his hand through his mop of hair like a spoiled child is dangerous as this paints him as harmless when he is anything but. Class to him is the get out of jail card, the product of a privileged background, all grace and favor, the cheque book bailout if all else fails. It's hardly the credentials of an upstanding citizen.
His grotesque portrayal of ethnic minorities is another failure of his "class" upbringing, couched in terms of colonialism his references to black people as "piccaninnies with watermelon smiles" and muslim women in burkhas as nothing more than postboxes is an affront to common decency and downright racist. When challenged about this Johnson characterised it like this "I like to think my instincts, in this respect, are as blameless as those of the average person; and the thing is, I am guilty nonetheless. Not of racism, I hope, but of spasms of incorrectitude, soon over, soon regretted". Well that's fucking alright then! Hand slap to forehead…
He leaves behind him a trail of failed relationships and "bastard" children the number of which is unknown as again the cheque book defence came in handy to keep that tally out of the public domain. His failure to accept responsibility for anything is self-evident in the way he distracts, waffles and bluster's through the present crisis of the pandemic, plausible deniability his weapon of choice. His animated delusional obsession of leaving the EU without a deal is on display everyday, his use of latin phrases used as a warrior would use a shield, to deflect from his inadequacy, his continued use of language which is often a mixture of unexpected metaphors or turns of phrase, hyperbole, and nostalgia, very often with a particularly British twist such as piffle, mugwump and nincompoop.
All the character traits listed here are the sum of the parts of a public facade to absolve Boris Johnson of the reality that he is in fact of a lesser intelligence than he and his entourage would have us believe, personally I blame his parents, siblings and educators who have allowed him to become the person he is today a self obsessed misogynist, a racist and narcissist, a fucking good slap early on in life would have knocked the "braghard" out of him and sending him through a normal educational system would have stood him in better stead than the cloak of privilege which hangs loose upon his rounded shoulders.
So when Boris and his "Classmates" drive us over the Brexit cliff edge all those who voted for him and his cronies will have those immortal words ringing in their collective ears "Well it's just Boris being Boris".....
© M.J. Sabine 2020
Lasse Fischer // On the Subject of The Moment
There is a certain something about arriving in a new geography. The mountain top you haven’t seen before has a certain shimmer to it, and you swear that the sun never broke through the clouds quite like it did just now. The opera of the world is to be found in places where you let it slide underneath your skin, out where the need to put up your guard dissipates.
Open roads and sweeping fields of rock and ice; they find their way through the pores of your skin; they seep into your bones and drive away the ache. It feels reinvigorating, it feels honest, it feels grandiose. Shadows moves on boulders as the car cuts through the landscape. In the horizon a church spire grows over a still lake. Vulcanized rubber makes a steady roll, and a gnashing of gravel accompanies the silent hum stemming from underneath the hood of the car, and you start to remember why you keep a camera nearby. Pick it up, try to capture the moment. It doesn’t succeed. The moment is already gone, it was meant to be something fleeting this time. Clouds drift lazily around in the sky. It doesn’t matter. You put down the camera.
A dreamlike haze has descended on the passengers in the vehicle. Seeing the world through a haze is an oft-forgot tool. It dulls the senses just enough to let the sharp edges turn round and soft. The heavy knots that tie you to the crust of the earth have loosened and slips off your wrists. As soon as the bonds hit the floor of the car the though tears itself free, and your body starts to feel light. You can see the thought leave through the window next to you and speed off to frolic on the nearest mountain top from where it dives into a milky white cloud. And the road, the road with its yellow lines stretches itself through the windshield and leaves out the back.
The car slowly dissolves until it isn’t there anymore, and you hover in the midst of nature, suspended over asphalt and snow in the hum from the motor, and then you blink again, breaking the hallucination. There is something to be learned here, there is a truth in this, and it is to be felt. This truth is not to be put on the torture rack of analysis and discussion; it is not to have its soul plucked from its chest through confession. It is quiet and dignified, and it slips through your fingers as the car follows a bend in the road.
The ocean sneaks up on you from the right. White foam dances on top of the wave before it is thrown ashore and its bubbles are left to burst on the black sand of Iceland. You step out of the car and slam the door behind you. Making your way to the water the wind whips your face, making it blush, feeling tiny needles on your skin. Deep breath, long exhale. The cold burrows underneath your coat from the outside seeking to warm itself with your body heat. You raise the camera and try to catch the clash and dance.
In the city, darkness slowly sets upon people, and the street lamps flicker on, spreading their yellow cones over blankets and signs. In front of the police station, you hear the drums of the poor and forgotten.
Lasse Fischer // Window Pains
Come closer, squish your face against the windowpane, and let me trace the pale outline of your cheek with my finger.
Doesn’t it feel safe?
It does for me.
And when you remove your face from the glass you leave behind a greasy stain, and I can continue fingering your outline for hours on end until you return.
Sometimes I pace around my room in the dark while I frantically, and with a harsh jerking of the neck, look at the window to check it every time I pass.
It glows with a cool blue light, and it is filled with outlines of the faces, the faces I caress.
Whenever I lie on my side in the bed, with my legs tugged up under me, resting my head on my stretched out arm, and my hand in a ninety degree angle, I do not surrender willingly to sleep.
I keep my eyes on the glass.
I lie in fear of blinking.
I lie in fear of absence of the light.
When I finally close my eyes there is nothing but an unending parade of rooms.
The faces do not press themselves up against the windows in here, in here I am alone, and I have no outlines to trace. I am separated from the light and the glass by the lids in front of my eyes.
Bathed in sweat I awake.
I keep my mouth open, ready to scream, but nothing ever comes out. My breathing is too shallow to create the explosion, so instead I chew on the air, like a fish lying on shore. Trying to make sure that the mechanics aren’t broken I feel for the rising motion of my chest, resting my hands on my ribs. The sensation of touch confirms that the function is maintained.
The blue window attracts more faces.
Their breaths fog op the glass.
‘Something is not right. Something seems off.’ The thought is fleeting, and even though the feeling lingers longer than the thought it too soon dissolves over the faces in the blue light. I take my hands off my increasingly protruding ribs and press them against the light making two stark silhouettes of something human on top something less than that.
There is something between the face and my hands, something that draws my finger to the cheek every time. It pulls on my elbow, it commands my sinew, and it makes my brain fire its neurons. I slip my tongue over my lips and spread saliva on the dried skin, feeling the rough edges as the organ goes from one end of the orifice to the other.
Nothing else lies outside my room and the surface of the window.
I continue living, forever haunted by the thought that the blue light one day might fade and disappear.
Artballistics Editorial // We are more than Photography
We are about process, art, critique. Critique is needed to create better. We are about video as well as stills, about canvas as well as technique. We hold each other to a higher standard, while we seek to appeal to not only a few. The focus of Artballistics is the ‘worthwhile’, the opposite of thumbing, as it were. Just like sex, art and creation get better and more immersive the more you focus on it.
I have asked some people to participate that bewildered tell me they are not photographers. It was never the intention of AB to be exclusionist in that way, which Eskild Krogh’s contributions show. You have to think of AB as a reaction to ‘the new old world’. We were entering an age of science, arts and reason when it, quite literally, blew up in our faces because we forgot to educate the broad masses - oh, and oops, did not eliminate poverty.
We have entered an age of stupidity and greed instead - the age of the CEO, corporate shells and a system that only sees you as a consumer. To combat that we need charm, art, humor, satire, wit and guile. We need to eliminate the noise and focus.
New stuff includes 2 new blogs coming up and stuff from Rubenstein and Sabine.
Martin J. Sabine // Is Online Privacy a Reality or just a Pipedream?
Our nation is controlled by opaque, amoral artificial intelligences -- and so are we. A lot of
people worldwide feel trapped by Facebook, the big-data platforms use AI’s to analyse, taunt
and manipulate us. Facebook is the worst of them, because most AIs are really only interested
in selling you stuff, Facebook is really only interested in keeping you engaged with Facebook,
and conversely, that often means filling you with anger and fear. Facebook has shown that a big
data AI can control our opinions and manipulate our emotions. But it's far from the only AI of its
kind, and this is just the beginning. The big data AI cat is out of the bag, and it knows everything
about you. Facebook is particularly powerful because it has convinced people to maintain an online presence and to log the contents of their lives within its structure. Most big data systems need several different data sources, collected from different sets of online activities, to create their profile of you: where and when you log onto the web, the locations tracked through your phone, who your friends are.
Facebook uses buttons and cookies embedded in web pages to build a profile on you even if
you don't hold an account with them and are just a visitor. But even if you have enabled an ad
blocker and don't ever click "Like," there's enough data out there for Facebook to trawl and to
find out plenty about you. It could track what your friends say about you, and use data collected
from other sources. If you have a whole network of friends who are local to you, there's a good
chance you live locally; if you shop at a number of stores or supermarkets in a local area, and
those supermarkets and stores share your loyalty card data with data brokers and then those
data brokers share it with Facebook, Facebook would be able to figure out where you live and
shop. Because there are so many data sources, opting out of Facebook data-sharing won't opt you out of the manipulations and predations of big data. If we're going to get a handle on these AIs, we need solutions that target the whole online ecosystem, not just one particularly obnoxious site. The conversation can't just be about Facebook.
One of the biggest AI growth areas is in accurate facial recognition solutions ... This AI
technology can scan 1 billion photos and recognize/identify photos in just one second."
According to the industry insiders, it's ready to deploy in banks, offices and hospitals. It won’t
matter if you don't have a Facebook account: Your bank card and loyalty card usage will be tied
to your face, and your bank will share that information with data brokers and credit reference
agencies such as Experian. You can't opt out of banks and stores. It will mean that every time
you step within reach of a camera, the AIs will collect data on you. Every time you use a card.
Every time you get tagged by a friend in a photo. Even trying to shut it down by denying
permissions and other close out methods won’t work the system is too big and intrusive, without
opting out of society entirely we are not going to get the privacy or protection we desire.
The other growth area and possibly the most frightening with regard to data collection and
spying is the move to so called “smart” products in the home. Products that you interact with
such as Amazon's Alexa and Google's Siri and a plethora of others with a benign presence in
the background such as lighting and fridge freezers and even toothbrushes that log how many times you miss brushing your teeth. All these items are in your own personal environment and
with regard to Alexa and Siri in touch with their respective manufacturers and managers every
minute of everyday, your viewing and browsing habits at the mercy of the conglomerates and
also the potential for smart TV's to actually being able to “see” you going about your daily life.
All companies that collect such personal information should be forced to request specific
permission for each destination they want to share data with -- blanket permissions wouldn't be
accepted. That would make large-scale data harvesting relatively inefficient, this in itself would
not fix the primary problem with Facebook. It knows enough about you, through your
interactions solely on Facebook to make you sell your soul for clicks and likes. Facebook needs
to grow a conscience and stop feeding off negative emotions. Blocking data-sharing would be a
little annoying. You might have to come up with different logins for different websites again. But
the only way we're going to free ourselves from a world run by AIs to break big data back down
into little data again.
As we know from recent coverage in the media Facebook at present, others will follow, are
being publically charged with selling and passing on privileged data to third parties and also
allowing their platform to be manipulated by “dark forces” to interfere with sovereign politics and
to proliferate “Fake News” which can destabilise governments and allow the threat of terrorism
to spread. I personally believe the time has come for a cold hard look at the way these platforms
operate or because of the amount of money generated by these huge corporations is this just a
“Pipe Dream”....
Kaz Narumi // Window
This train is bound for "my old past"
The interior of the train was even more bitterly chill than the snow-covered plains without.
I soothed almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold.
I was dreaming of my old glad days when I had chased my friend through the flowering
grasses of the summer meadows and of my late mother wiped away my tears and helped me understand.
I'm so tired.
My friends, my mother, I'm looking forward to seeing you....soon...
EDITOR'S NOTE
Finally, we present another exciting artist/photographer. Kaz is known to have a huge heart for others, always trying to support or inspire others. Sometimes via his own work, but also by sharing that of others he himself finds interesting or giving.
Martin Sabine // Strange Encounters
I’m interested in how some bodies are “in an instant” judged as suspicious, or dangerous, as
bodies to be feared, just because we can’t explain something it doesn't follow that we should be
afraid, some judgments in some circumstances can also have lethal consequences. There can
be nothing more dangerous to a body than the social agreement that that body is dangerous.
Look at today's society a real and present paranoia prevails. There’s a real suspicious guy. This
guy looks like he’s up to no good, he’s on drugs or something. This is further compounded by
racial profiling, he looks black. he’s wearing a dark hoodie, now he’s coming toward me. He’s
got his hands in his pockets, he’s a black male. Note the viscous slide: suspicious, up to no good, coming at me, looking black, a dark hoodie, wearing black, being black. The last statement makes an explicit racial overtone as to what we are all seeing right from the very beginning. We are seeing a Black man is already implied in the first description “a real suspicious guy.” Let me repeat: there can be nothing more dangerous to a body than the social agreement that that body is dangerous.
Are we as a society right to feel fear, because a stranger is a dark shadowy figure. I use the word “dark” deliberately here: it is a word that cannot be untangled from a racialised history. To use this word as if it can be disentangled from that history is to be entangled by that history. The racialisation of the stranger is not immediately apparent—it is disguised, we might say by the strict anonymity of the stranger, the one who after all, we are told from childhood, could be anyone. We witness from this example how this “could be anyone” is pointed: the stranger as a figure, points to some bodies more than others. This “could be anyone” thus only appears as an open possibility, stretching out into a horizon, in which the stranger reappears as the one who is always lurking in the shadows. Note; most films use this premise as a precursor to murderous intent. Note also that the perception of others is also an impression of others: to be made into a
stranger is to be blurred. I have since described racism as a blunt instrument, which is another
way of making the same argument. Stop and search, the so called “Suss law” for example, is a
methodology that makes this bluntness into a point: Stop! You are light brown with dark
features, Asian! Your carrying a rucksack You could be Muslim! You could be a terrorist! The
blurrier the figure of the stranger the more bodies can be caught by it. So long as a society we
recognise such injustices exist then we can become clearer when we legislate against it, and as
a consequence stop racial profiling and the demonisation of whole cultures from becoming the
norm.
© M.J. Sabine 2018.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Perhaps a small coincidence, or perhaps great minds think alike. But neither Zaar Riisberg nor Sabine had read each other's contributions. Not quite same theme - still, focus is the same. They both live in countries built on immigration and now watch in horror, as the rhetoric has taken a turn they had never expected. See Zaar Riisberg's offering on the same theme here.
Martin Sabine // Neighbourhood Watch
Is this Voyeurism? – At first glance the image looks voyeuristic but be careful of the “Venus Eye Trap” the original shot is of a naked woman in a yoga pose a perfectly acceptable portrayal of health and wellbeing. However add the shadow of a window frame and the image takes on a completely different set of values, we are them lured into the realm of
voyeuristic behaviour which for some in society is a taboo.
How is that an image can switch between two standards and values by digital manipulation,
it is a condition that is being debated daily within the media can we really rely on what we
visually see, after all a photograph is usually looked at but seldom looked in to. “Peeping” at
this sensual image is a delight of decadent art; the watcher who records the supposed crime
(both the artist and consumer of the art) is constructed as being marginal, powerless to act
and so exculpated from any action, a passive subject within a complex pleasure.
Please remember though this particular image was taken with the full knowledge and
permission of the subject, does that exonerate the viewer from having an emotional
attachment or detachment from the image or in fact of feeling uncomfortable? probably
not.
What we have to remember is that all photography by definition is voyeuristic for example a
“street” photograph of people in public places generally taken without permission could be
deemed to be voyeurism, I think its best summed up by a quote from Helmut Newton who
said; “Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar”…….
© M.J.Sabine 2018
EDITOR'S NOTE
It is usually an extreme attention to detail that floors you with Martin Sabine. But often, it is also a thought provoking tour de force to witness his creations. It demands you look at it for longer than the average 5-15 seconds...if that.
The Gloryhole Deception
by Zaar Riisberg (Zaarchasm)
We would all like for the image to speak for itself. Sometimes, it depends on what kind of mind you have and where it is. Art should be provocative - but it cannot just be that, you need aesthetics, and while some of it may come out in an analysis of the work, there should always be an aloof mystique that you cannot explain. Art makes us realise things we cannot realise through math or physics. You know what I am talking about - that sense you get sometimes, where you are so close to understanding something profound. It is not your brain fucking with you. It is a flash of intangible insight. The thing is, as valuable as something like that is, you will always be at a loss to explain it to others - they have to feel it for themselves.
So. Whether you suck the right or the left one, is entirely up to you. I am just the artist.
