Memorable watermelon. || Maybe it’s a meat thing. || Monster competition, 1967. || Mirror for sale. || Two men with placards, an exchange of ideas ensues. || The thrill of watching dough. || Card game. || How to earn a doctorate in psychology. || She’s got a big one. || Bouncy. || Just one job. || One of these things is not like the others. || You want one and you know it. || Oh glorious enrichment. || We revolve around him, you know. || Cinema snacks. || Fancy a little chicken? || Not unfair. || No, I insist, ladies first. || It’s “gender affirming,” see. || A compendium of profanities, sorted by subject and rudeness. From cobblers and cack to putain de merde and cona da tua mãe. || Stiff competition for food. || “Unfortunately, the cost of this mistake is quite high.” || And finally, funereal scenes.

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Further to this, and also via Charlotte Gill, let’s visit the world of politically radical tableware. Specifically,

Because this is what you need to know when taking a class in ceramics:

We funded this.

But remember, universities need more money 😉 pic.twitter.com/gKEbweQsVG

— Charlotte Gill (@CharlotteCGill) July 29, 2024

For those deeply intrigued:

Well, obviously, you can’t just learn how to make plates.

And hey, who wouldn’t want some of that lovely racial awareness? Or, less coyly, practised question-begging and pretentious racial guilt. Or unearned racial resentment, depending on how brown you happen to be. I mean, you can’t just go through life interacting with people as individuals. You have to cultivate a neurotic habit of seeing people as avatars of some supposedly put-upon racial group. Or conversely, as oppressors, as proven by their pallor, their deplorable whiteness.

And a fragrant utopia will surely follow.

The creative titan behind the project – named, inevitably, Working With Whiteness – is Victoria Burgher, a self-styled “artist from a colonising country,” for whom pretentious, and rather invidious, racial agonising has been a path to many grants and awards. Ms Burgher, we’re told,

You see,

And,

Strained metaphors are very in, it seems. Along with teetering piles of assumptions. Also, Bad Whitey. It’s all terribly original. Very daring. Not at all conformist.

It occurs to me, however, that Ms Burgher’s contrived, modish waffle may make a kind of sense if you think of it as an attempt to add social heft to the otherwise pedestrian art that she actually produces.

For instance:

“From The River To The Sea… #2 (2023). Porcelain, cobalt, gold lustre and glaze, 27cm.”

And,

“White But Working On It (2022). Glazed porcelain ceramic badges, 5-6 cm.”

And,

“Whiteness (2018). Ink on bagasse (sugar cane fibre), fabric, pins, 14 x 14 cm.”

It would, I think, explain a few things. As it often does.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the unattractive objects shown above, and others very much like them, Martin D adds,

A fair question. One worth pondering.

Ms Burgher approvingly cites Ms Robin DiAngelo, the peddler of neurosis mentioned here, the L Ron Hubbard of wokeness, and whose devotees, as we’ve seen, are often wildly unhinged and nakedly malevolent. Which probably tells us much of what we need to know about Ms Burgher and her racial affectations. The mindset she wishes to inflict on others. And by extension, those who succumb.

And so, Ms Burgher makes her unattractive tat, and calls it art, and treads on ceramic eggshells, and calls it performance art, while listing the hallucinatory evils of having pale skin. And while telling those sufficiently credulous that “whiteness is oppression,” the source of all that is wrong, a basis for eternal shame, and that white people should “not behave white.”

You see, we will purge the world of bigotry by embracing wholesale the mental habits of the bigot.

So, yes. Someone quite fucked up.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Attention, music lovers. Charlotte Gill brings thrilling news:

I knew you’d be keen.

Naturally, all this healing and coexistence, all this righteousness and resistance, necessitates certain rules, indeed a manifesto:

As Ms Gill observes, one eyebrow slightly raised:

Ah, but, you see, it’s “the radical act of collective song.” The “radical act of joy.” And the radical act of shunning white people as some kind of moral contaminant. How the time must fly.

Readers intrigued by the prospect of shaping the tapestry of their collective sound, via “somatic practice,” “singing and healing together,” and “co-creating an anthem,” can savour the results of all this radicalism below:

This is what a “Decolonise Choir” looks and sounds like. Find out more in my new piece 🚨🦄 🌈 💰 🌹 https://t.co/gFm6yv2QKo pic.twitter.com/pSaI9301Sx

— Woke Waste 💰🦄 (@WokeWaste) July 25, 2024

You may now resume your humdrum, dreary, non-decolonised lives.

Update, via the comments:

Nikw211 asks, not unreasonably,

Indeed. It’s a head-scratcher.

However, as the only racial group being explicitly excluded is Old Whitey, the obvious inference is that the cause of all this alleged misery and “trauma” is the party being excluded. As if the mere proximity of People Of Pallor would inhibit and befoul any creative endeavour, any glimmer of “joy.” Given the minority status of white people in London, it seems a bit much. And ever so slightly ungrateful.

And it is, I think, worth noting that the nation’s capital, where these dramas of “resistance” unfold, has in my lifetime gone from a native white-majority city, over 90%, to a native white-minority one, around 35%. Yet it would seem that even this dramatically downsized white devil population is, for some, still too burdensome and oppressive.

A cause of “collective trauma.”

So, I’ve returned from my travels and I have questions. Among them, why is a planet-wide celebration of athleticism and uncommon sporting prowess being introduced with yet another tedious display of cross-dressing, oddly selective sacrilege, and self-satisfied obesity?

Perhaps I’m missing something. By all means, illuminate me in the comments.

Update, via the comments, where dicentra adds,

I was struck more by the tackiness, the tawdriness of the thing. It just looked so inapt, so adolescent and low-rent. Hackneyed to the point of anachronism. It occurred to me that as a snapshot of a collective cultural psyche, a statement of where we are, or where Our Betters are. it doesn’t instil any great confidence. Or – what’s the word? – oh yes, pride.

Sort of,

I suppose the gender-bending and drag bacchanalia could be construed as some kind of comment on the current Olympic rules regarding who may compete in women’s events – i.e., women, not men. At least, not men who have gone through puberty. So, some men. But not as many as some activists and “allies” might wish. Say, ostentatiously “queer” artistic directors of Olympic opening ceremonies. Maybe even this small concession to physical reality – that men and women are different – was deemed a provocation, an outrage, and a basis for retaliation. As if not being allowed to cheat were a form of oppression.

It’s just a thought. Though not, I think, a wildly implausible one.

Also, open thread.

Brace for turbulence:

Argentina’s first transgender pilot has debuted the new uniform designed for the female pilots of the country’s national airline.

Traniela Campolieto announced his “transition” to passengers during a flight last year, after which one person tried to get off the plane. pic.twitter.com/v1h3Iyl128

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) July 20, 2024

And hey, every passenger wants the pilot to be a bewigged, mentally ill fetishist who bangs on about the super-girly tightness of his uniform, and who takes endless, pouting selfies in the cockpit.

To say nothing of the heightened risk of suicidal inclinations. Ah, the thrill of modernity.

Before becoming a shimmering vision of womanliness, Mr Campolieto was a professional bodybuilder, a proverbial brick shithouse. Hence the bad wig, the transformative powers of which may have been overestimated.

Update, via the comments, where WTP adds,

From the above Publica link:

And so, the pilot in charge of 250 tonnes of Airbus A330, and on whom the lives of 400 or so passengers depend, is a man whose perceptions are wildly unreliable, at least regarding himself.

Previously: Banking and mental illness, together at last. Oh, and policing and mental illness. Because unstable personalities, such that a person isn’t entirely sure who or what they are on any given day, are very in right now.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.