Diggers getting nowhere
Sometimes ideas come full circle and when they do you either have to celebrate that their time has come, or despair that there will never be a right time for them and that human nature is such that we are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. The animated gif above was one of my responses to that feeling of 'stuckness' I had when thinking about the promise of The Diggers. It seems that for every shovelful of earth they removed, someone would have a spadeful of dirt to throw right back onto the pile.
To dig the earth is a powerful idea, one that is celebrated by the name 'The Diggers'. They were a group of people who way back in the middle of the 17th century envisioned the tight ecological interrelationship between humans and the rest of the world. They had the idea that connections between people and the land were deep and inseparable and they advocated for social and agrarian reforms including the common ownership of land. The Diggers was a name given to 'The True Levellers' because of their insistence on digging as a way of signalling that any plot of earth could be made into a productive garden. One of their leaders was Gerrard Winstanley, who declared that "true freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth". They were one of the first political groups to write down ideas that we now associate with socialism or communism but more importantly they understood that humans were in an interrelationship with the land and that it should not be owned by anyone. As they started to cultivate common land, they began to be called the Diggers, but their aims were much wider than that, they were developing their manifesto at the same time as the English Civil War. King Charles the First had been executed and therefore the unquestioned concept that the country and its land had to be owned and ruled by an elite class of people had been broken. For the first time the idea was mooted that no one individual should own land; as Winstanley stated, "The Earth was made a common treasury for all." These words now ring truer than ever; but when we look at the statistics of present day land ownership what do we see?
In the book 'Who Owns England?' by Guy Shrubsole, we find that around 25,000 people, most of them still members of the aristocracy or owners of large companies, own approximately 48% of the nation’s land. The aristocracy and gentry accounting for around 30%, with the next 18% coming from corporations. However even the land technically owned by corporations, after looking at that in more detail, and exploring the labyrinthine legal ownership bureaucracy that covers up real ownership, he finds that much of the land that corporations hold is also essentially in the hands of the gentry. As Shrubsole puts it, “Land ownership in England is astonishingly unequal, heavily concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite.”
Almost a hundred years after The Diggers made their mark, in 1755 Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his 'Discourse on the Origin of Equality' had this to say, “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying "This is mine", and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” If only someone had pulled up those stakes or filled up that ditch.
Perhaps now you can see what I mean by my concern that we are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again.
But if we don't continue trying to raise the flag of alternative possibilities, we become ethically compromised and we easily forget those artists who have for many years nailed their socialist credentials to their left leaning ship's mast, because by virtue of the questions they ask and the causes they celebrate, it is unlikely that their work will become widely known in the mainly right wing media or bought and sold within the capitalist dominated current art market. Gerrard Winstanley by Clifford Harper
As I write about Gerrard Winstanley I am reminded of the work of Clifford Harper. I first came across his work when visiting the anarchist bookshop just behind the Whitechapel Gallery in London. As an artist he is firmly embedded into a tradition that stretches back to expressionist woodcuts, a style he echoes with his mainly pen and ink drawings. Clifford Harper is described as an anarchist underground artist, and of course is regarded by many people more as an illustrator than fine artist. As he puts it very clearly in his own words, “I don’t regard myself as an artist. I am a craftsman. Fuck art.” For myself he fits into a tradition of socialist protest art, which other artists such as Sue Coe also inhabit, a tradition that is a world wide one and that continues to have relevance as a visual voice of dissent.
What is unique about this visual 'voice', is that it is designed to be a communal voice rather than the voice of an individual, you can see this very clearly by comparing a few artists from this tradition.
Sue Coe: We are many they are few 2020
Clifford Harper: Anarchy Now 2019
Charles Nkosi: Submission to Death 1976
John Muafangejo: Rorke's Drift 1981
Maurice Merlin: Black Legion Widow 1936
Zheng Yefu: Fight 1933
Käthe Kollwitz: The People 1922
Frans Masereel: The City 1925
Safo Marko, untitled linocut
Ken Sprague: Happiness
Neil Doloricon: Tribute to frontliners 2020
Black and white is of course a powerful visual idea. The world is full of colour and therefore not only does a black and white image stand out because of its internal high contrast, it stands out because it is so different to the coloured world that surrounds it. Simple print making methods such as woodcut, lend themselves to stark imagery, and community groups who want to promote their ideas are often strapped for cash, therefore basic print technology is vital to their ability to communicate. However not all these artists use wood or linocut, Clifford Harper mainly uses black ink on white paper, the reality now being that reproduction methods are so cheap that in contrast large woodblocks or rolls of linoleum are prohibitively expensive. It is though the visual language that is most important, the long association of socialist left wing ideas with clear high contrast black and white imagery, means that an audience 'gets it' very quickly. The emotional language of socialist expression has become universal, whether we are in China, Belgium, the USA, Albania, the Philippines or England, and because of this it is a language that all of us can use.
Clifford Harper like most artists that use the visual language of socialist expression, also has a personal language of visual expression, one that I find at its best when he makes images such as the one below of the humble dandelion. Using pen and ink to simplify what is often regarded as a weed, together with a symmetrical composition and a reframing of the seed head as a halo, he reminds us that this so called weed, used to be part of our staple diet in England and that far from being a weed, it is a plant that has saved many of society's poor from starvation. Dandelions are a rich source of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. They have powerful healing properties as they can be eaten to improve the immune system, detoxify the liver or gallbladder, as well as help kidney function. Its long taproot brings up nutrients so that nearby shallow-rooting plants can benefit from the minerals and nitrogen it extracts as well as its beautiful yellow flowers attracting pollinating insects such as bees.
Dandelion: Clifford Harper
It is interesting to compare Harper's image with the much more well known and celebrated artist Michael Landy's weed drawings. Landy was lauded for etchings that critics said celebrated what was often overlooked and thought of as weeds. Yes they are sensitive drawings of the dandelion and that is a good thing. However Harper goes further and constructs the image of the dandelion in relation to his own socialist agenda and he gives it an almost religious conviction. Landy is properly humble in front of the dandelion, its pale grey image forcing us to peer into the image to discover its beauty, but Harper is sensitive to the wider ecological issues involved, ones that just as the Diggers intimated, we need to heed and to act upon, to respond as if all nature is sacred. In this case the weed is portrayed as if it is a saint with a halo. The concept of a surrounding aura, glow or irradiation was used in Christian and other religions to single out figures that had God like status and Harper uses this idea to give honorific value to a common plant, in a similar way that he might try to give value to the often overlooked 'common man or woman'.
In San Francisco in the 1960s another Digger community action group emerged. This was a group of activists and street theatre actors operating out of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. Contributors included Peter Berg, Neal Cassady, Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg, Emmett Grogan, Paul Krassner, and Gary Snyder. The group put out a magazine between 1965-8 and printed leaflets known as 'Digger Papers'.
Digger Dollar
The Digger Dollar was a vital image as it highlighted the central role that money now had in society and in particular the dollar was now the value system that all the rest of the world's currencies measured themselves against.
The issues brought to the fore by the Diggers continue. A continuing ownership of the land by a few powerful individuals and corporations as well as their wasteful use of the resources they own, has brought about a climate crisis and a growing awareness of the consequences of global warming. Ecological art forms are therefore proliferating; in particular this means an art that could involve functional ecological systems-restoration, as well as socially engaged, activist and community-based interventions. Ecological art addresses politics, culture, economics, ethics and aesthetics as they impact on our collective awareness of the threats to ecosystems that the dominant capitalist system perpetrates. Its practitioners are often found working cooperatively and as well as artists, may include scientists, philosophers and other activists all working together to restore or heal what has been broken by unthinking economic growth and also raising public awareness by developing very visible projects. You will find many links to artists working in this way if you use the sustainability resources link below, but my point for today's post is that at various times in the past groups have collected together to raise the public's awareness of what happens if we lose sight of our responsibility to the planet. My fear is that the power of the existing Earth's owners will once again win out and that those who many years ago conquered the various lands by force of might, will hold on to that power forever. The new King Charles inherits what the old King Charles bequeathed to the royal family, and I realise how so many of us feel safer if traditions are maintained, however it was a salutary reminder that when a conservative chancellor wrecked the economy, that the people that it really affected were as always the working poor. When tackled as to how they would support poor people through this crisis the government's safeguarding minister Rachel Maclean, stated that people could 'take on more hours' at work or move to a 'better paid job' to protect themselves from this new cost of living surge. This is not just about conservative ministers being disconnected from the realities of people's lives, as the Labour party put it, it is a reflection of the deep divisions between those that own the land and those that work on it. Until we have true equality not just between people, but between humans and the rest of the world, we will be getting nowhere again.
In the meantime perhaps it is worth looking at how one artist in Ireland is responding to the situation:
'The Distant is Imminent' is a work by Camille Seaman, depicting her still and moving images from Antarctica and the Arctic.
Meant to be projected on the walls of cities most threatened by rising sea waters, a line in Seaman's video depicts where the water level would be in that particular location in 2050, if no action is taken to curb climate change – viscerally showing that while icebergs melting away might feel distant and abstract, climate change is indeed imminent and personal.
A living artwork, the piece initially covers four locations (more to be added in the coming months) – New York City, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Limerick, where the artist resides.
You can download the video files from here, and project the video on the walls of your city, to raise awareness about the climate crisis.
See also:
Wikipedia links
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is another example of how human beings can collectively work together for mutual benefit.
I can speak to the therapeutic effects of Jigsaw Puzzles from personal experience as someone who enjoys them. Concentrating on arranging and assembling the parts brings a soothing sensation. It's a great way to clear your head and focus on the work; it's a thoughtful exercise. In addition, finishing a puzzle gives you a great sense of satisfaction.
ReplyDelete