The Bollocks Is Bolted On
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.
Some people have never had an original thought.
Every. Single. Time.
Right, so original the vets give them out when pets die, only difference is that these have actual meaning to someone.
In fairness, making an object of uncommon aesthetic value isn’t easy. However, regurgitating fashionable but socially corrosive bollocks… Well, any status-seeking mediocrity can do that.
.
The casual Jew hating is a nice touch. Just the thing when you want to serve Sunday brunch.
Ms Burgher’s output (verbal and physical) is what gives art a bad name.
True enough, but this doesn’t even reach common, let alone any, aesthetic value. Aside from being banal, it is just lazy and sloppy, not exactly what you would call Ming Dynasty level work.
Service for ten, coming right up!
It’s hard to see much aesthetic in Ms Burgher’s, um, output. It’s at best unremarkable, and very often not even that. And if trying to create something that warrants the label art, there’s something to be said for acknowledging when the attempt has failed, perhaps comically.
I believe the term is quality control.
Hunter Biden is an artist too, you know. It’s just money laundering. The ML game doesn’t only happen on a large scale. Who do you suppose buys all this crap? Kamala Harris raised $100 million virtually overnight. That’s an interesting story as well.
Discussing “whiteness” through a material invented by the Chinese?
And for those deeply uninterested?
Or is that no longer allowed?
Definitely bollocks.
Ever notice those who bang on about ‘white fragility’, ‘white defensiveness’, &c. are describing their own reaction to the vicissitudes of life?
They’re the sort who, with more courage in their convictions, would be featured in police body-camera videos.
It does have that whiff about it.
It would have to be much better to rise to the level of ‘pedestrian’.
I was being kind. I don’t like to be mean. As you know.
As usual they completely ignore the Asian physical origins of porcelain and its rich history and cultural meaning in the East.
Doesn’t fit the narrative.
Is that rustling in the bin liner I hear?
[ Drags bin into store room, shuts door. A muffled rustling can still be heard. ]
From the river to the sea, why does it still hurt when I pee.
You know, the other day you were asking what to tell people this blog was about…
[ Ponders emergency room report after last session in Correction Booth. ]
This is my innocent face.
[ Points to face. ]
Innocent of what is the question.
When did Britain become a bad pastiche of a Monty Python skit?
BTW, that table setting linked above is titled “Decolonial Dinner Dreaming”.
However, do pop over and enjoy some of her other “work” which includes such things as “Shower Curtain” and the every so original and edgy “Bloody Fist with Rosary” (not the actual titles, just descriptions).
There is also a photo of her apparently
haranguinglecturing in front of a statue of Churchill, “…using porcelain rice bowls to discuss Churchill’s role in the Bengal Famine of 1943.” I am guessing that minor little WWII thing didn’t get mentioned.Are we sure that the killer is the son of Rwandan immigrants? Last I checked his identity had not been released, and only a few twitter accounts were making claims as to his name or ethnicity.
What’s striking is the mix of contrivance and weird mental uniformity. As if every ideological tic and affectation is delivered in the same box.
From The Management of Murder by Mark Steyn
Thank you!
Note the at best there as it’s of singular importance.
While bad art nourished on half-baked ideas is a commonplace, Burgher’s work is excruciatingly hideous.
And this is not something that can simply be dismissed with an oh-but-it’s-all-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder-all-art-is-subjective handwave. It is objectively shite.
And what’s more, I can prove it.
Look at Cargo (2007) – only a combination of sheer mediocrity and lazy, ill-disciplined thinking could waste that much time and money on such lazy and obvious imagery:
Britain had sugar plantations > Africans were enslaved to work on the plantations > The Atlantic Slave trade was horrific > shackles cast in sugar and melted to look like blood.
That kind of reasoning is recognised as cringe by 16 year-olds when other 16 year-olds do it in their GCSE art portfolios.
Pretty sure they’re not either.
The British justice system, borderline moribund as it already is, will very soon come to rue the day it celebrated the decision of Mrs Justice Yip in February this year.
If you are wondering who Mrs Justice Yip is, this is the woman who lifted restrictions on the naming of the murderers of Brianna Ghey, claiming that there was
Brianna Ghey was a transgender (male-to-female) 16 year-old who was murdered by two classmates, Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, also 16.
If the horrific murder of Ghey was considered so exceptional that the ban on identifying perpetrators under the age of 18 could be lifted, then there is absolutely no grounds for not lifting the ban in this case and revealing the identity of the 17 year-old demon in this case.
None.
But then, this is the British justice system we’re talking about – so no doubt they will find some weak excuse to explain why there was “a strong public interest” in Ghey’s case, but not in this one.
And I’m sure the fact that Ghey was transgender and Ghey’s killers were both ethnically white British played no part in the decision at all. [ Sarcasm ]
Given some of the examples of ‘art’ provided by our kindly host, ‘tediously’ or ‘predictably’ seem more apt than ‘excruciatingly’.
No, don’t thank me. You’re much too kind.
[ Waits for flowers, chocolates, decent-sized trophy. ]
The most common use for white porcelain is toilets. Just sayin’.
I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.
It’s always pottery, or knitting, or sewing. The kinds of things lower-class homemakers used to do to save money that middle-class working women do as hobbies.
These are bitter childless wine aunts who bought into the notion that traditional family and femininity was an Oppressive Tool of the Patriarchy, but deep down they yearn for it and the resulting cognitive dissonance comes out in work like this. Nature will not be denied.
I’m clearly missing something, so everyone feel free to pile on with opprobrium, but, um, why are they working with white clay? Why are all the pieces basically baked or glazed white? Why not brown clay, Georgia red clay, hey, Black clay? Why the always-offensive White clay in a class designed to denigrate White-ness? Am I not understanding some Deeper Meaning here, or is the class presenter just stupid, or venal, or stupidly venal, or what?
Constant banging on the drum of racial hatred is the first step to actual pogroms. In Rwanda, the gov radio blasted out hatred of a minority until a massacre happened. And not a little one. Her plate is a step to murdering jews. In South Africa I hear that one of the political parties is advocating for elimination of whites. Armenians were massacred in early 20th century. Russia and China murdered millions. Humans are capable of this.
It is starting to look like Kamala is the acting president. She has announced new gov actions unilaterally. A coup seems to have happened.
Any and all would be the safest bet.
New puppet, same puppeteers.
Per the post and several earlier comments, this is all very shallow and very unoriginal.
And (Yes.JPG) she is all of those things crushed, soaked, heated to boil off the self consciousness, and left to cool on the side of the road like a pile of dung or the corpse of a squirrel.
Nikw211: ‘so no doubt they will find some weak excuse to explain why there was “a strong public interest” in Ghey’s case, but not in this one.’
They probably won’t even bother to trot out an excuse, just ignore it the way Starmer ignored the heckling he got from the crowd when he rushed to Southport for his flower-laying photo opportunity
Laughed, not sorry.
The media: it is one thing for media to have commentators who give their opinion Fine. But the actual “reporters” are now busy erasing Kamala’s actual history. “Border czar? No, she was never that.” Just like they covered for Biden for years. They have sunk below used car salesmen in the public’s view as a result.
From Scott Adams: Now please break out “progressive” from “liberal”.
Oh lord. A couple comments down we get Gentle Mommy again.
You don’t hate journalists enough. You try and try, but it is literally impossible.
Can this really be true?
Is there such a thing as an ‘E-list’ celebrity?
I felt vaguely uneasy about Takei even many years ago, but this is far beyond what I expected to ever hear. So I remain unsure although a google search did return a few hits about some sort of on-the-air bachelor party. Not paying attention to celebrities makes for a more pleasant life.
A perfect choice of cartoon to mock liberal B.S.
Instantly recognizable R. Crumb style, although I’ve seen very little of his cartoons. (The grotesquely portrayed dysfunctions were just too disturbing.)
Also: I thought liberals disapproved of saying anyone was “genetically predisposed”.
Reversing the thought bubbles there would probably be closer to the modern meaning of ‘normal’.
A disturbingly asymmetric face declares nobody will prevent him from using women’s restrooms.
I’m bitter and childless (no wine), but the difference is that as far as I know, I don’t have a Cluster B personality disorder.
Y’all would tell me if I did, right?
No doctor I, but isn’t that Bell’s palsy? Only it seems like his entire right side is affected, like he has a traumatic brain injury that didn’t fully heal.
Geez … how long has this Gentle Mommy been unironically engaging in this equine excrement?
I think one can dismiss prattle about some allegedly omnipresent yet oddly intangible “white supremacy,” much as one can dismiss a self-styled artist who has little discernible skill, and no discernible interest in aesthetics.
I just see two facets of the same pretence.
The main thing Ayn Rand got right was how tyranny is the revenge of a critical mass of envious mediocrities.
I’ve recently realized that DEI is powered by the belief that anyone can be trained to perform any task, that there’s no such thing as talent or inherent ability, and so all inequalities must be the work of bigotry and malice. Look at how they talk about Elon Musk — they insist he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so of course he’s a billionaire. Exactly zero understanding of how his hypercompetence creates valuable things that simply didn’t exist before he willed them into being.
These mediocrities can’t detect how they fall short of more competent folks, so they figure life owes them and it’s time to take down the unfairly privileged.
These are the ones to be terrified of. They’ll take us out by sheer force of numbers.
[ Compiles Friday’s Ephemera. Checks horizon for signs of Stephanie. ]
Bitterly clinging to the Blank Slate. The accumulating evidence discrediting the Blank Slate has driven them mad.
They assume that to be true, and then use the existence of inequality as proof that it is true.
[ Compiles Friday’s Ephemera. Checks horizon for signs of Stephanie. ]
[Returns RPG to shelf]
She’s a violent drunk, you know.
[ Slides mineral water to Stephanie. ]
I appreciate it’s unusual to comment on your own comment, and likely no one else particularly cares, but I made an error in that post.
Yip did take the unprecedented step of revealing the identities of Ghey’s murderers despite the fact that both were under 18.
But she did not do it until after the conclusion of the trial – which for the 17 year-old in the Southport case will not apply for quite some time yet, a year or more.
@JuliaM They probably won’t even bother to trot out an excuse
The error I made aside, that is quite probable.
Certainly with the collusion of the Fourth Estate.
In a nutshell, that.
Not a huge fan of Atlas Shrugged, but she does make some palpable hits in it including this you mentioned here.
There is a similar idea on the libertarian-ish right that anyone can be anything that they want to be. The DEI variant uses power to force the square pegs into round holes. What comes of the inevitable inequalities of life is a very complex, complicated thing that most people can’t begin to recognize even by those few that try to. It can also be quite frightening if you dive too deep into it. A tabula rasa philosophy has great appeal to both extremes. Eliminates the Higher Power from informing talent/ability. Where souls come from. That sort of stuff. Making man his own creator has broad appeal.
I’ve recently realized that DEI is powered by the belief that anyone can be trained to perform any task, that there’s no such thing as talent or inherent ability, and so all inequalities must be the work of bigotry and malice
Over at Huffinpaint Post* where the bollocks is welded on, the possible present outcome of past DEI (by other names) is lost on one writer:
Probably demonstrating the point about believing anyone can be trained, the writer comes up with this remarkable conclusion:
DEI leads to meritocracy. Right, sure. There is also this fun fact:
Men are 30% of the population. OK, then. It is a mystery why people might look askance at DEI types.
*(Wade into that at your own risk – DO NOT read the comments if you value your sanity)
Yeah. If they were held to the same standards little miss Gentle Mommy would have gotten her ass kicked at a much younger age and this whole post wouldn’t exist. But enough about fantasy worlds. These people exist because our friends, neighbors, and relatives support these ideas and these people. A normal, healthy society does not tolerate this crap nor the kinds of people who tolerate/excuse it. Which is why we are not a normal, healthy society. It’s not about elections, it’s about culture. It’s no accident nor coincidence that 99.4% of Hollywood and the book publishing ‘industry’ are hard leftists. The people who buy the movie tickets and the books, etc. are supporting it.
Botox or baseball bat?
My money’s on the latter.
Maybe white men are 30%.
She is the embodiment of nails on a chalkboard.
That’s what I call the ‘MBA fallacy’ – the notion that anyone with an MBA, lacking other qualifications or experience, can take over and run a company as well or better than those with years of experience in the industry. It predates the advent of MBAs but they seem to be the most recent avatars.
Boeing is the most prominent example to hand.
Remember the liberal mantra, “everyone is creative”? In reality few are.
[ Peers into glass ]
Given the potables on offer it seems more likely she’s violent because of what she’s drunk.
Here, let me freshen that for you.
Let’s see. I’ll need egg whites and cucumber…
Going by the photo here, Mr. Burgher has only been a “she” fairly recently:
https://www.gold.ac.uk/our-people/profile-hub/politics-and-international-relations/pg/victoria-burgher/
Don’t forget the ipecacuanha.
White supremacy: sure, that explains the complete melt-down happiness over the US olympic women’s gymnasts. Everyone loves Simone Biles. Because we are racist. huh
MBA fallacy–that is what has happened with Boeing. It has recently been run by MBA types who tried to save money by outsourcing thousands of parts. They also strong-armed the FAA into letting them upgrade their planes (more complicated controls for example) without giving new training to pilots, with 2 crashed planes the result.
The “anyone can do anything” fallacy is based on the recognition that nepotism just gives a job to your nephew, who has no qualifications, thus all jobs givem to whites are just nepotism–a huge logical gap but there it is.
Art = not art.
‘Anti-racism’ = racism.
It’s progressivism. You often have to rotate things 180 degrees.
Agreed 100%. The “Professional” managers’ buzzword-and-trend cult that too often leave disasters in their wakes.
It’s a pity we can’t rotate all those wankers in the Correction Booth.
If an illustration is needed, see, for instance, this:
Needless to say, many, many others can be found in the archives.
Is that one of those Mexican dogs that throws up a lot?
Man = woman
It’s a brave, new world boomer. These things have ways of resolving themselves, though! Praise God.
One small miracle–the Olympics only lets trans compete if they went through transition before puberty.
I’ve recently realized that DEI is powered by the belief that anyone can be trained to perform any task,
Recently test marketed in the Venezuelan oil industry. Apparently DEI, like Socialism, must be done just right to work.
One small miracle–the Olympics only lets trans compete if they went through transition before puberty.
Except for these guys who weren’t prepubescent last year but by some miracle are now.
Oh, Paris based. I guess they have time travel capability.
More psychologically marginal educators.
I’m just going to leave this here, for no reason whatsoever.
Yes. That part really annoyed me. I had seen the earlier “rule” but watching that Algerian boxer I couldn’t believe he had transitioned at all, let alone pre-puberty. Plus…Algerian. Everything is a bloody lie anymore. Even the lies. Would not surprise me if he wasn’t even Algerian. Algeria is just an idea, you know…
Also no M.D., but it looks like the right side of his *skull* is smaller. My bet’s on congenital deformity. I can only imagine the shit he got as a kid and still gets.
Vegan water.
Is ‘praxis’ the plural of ‘prat’?
When the inevitable backlash comes, remember that it is you and me who are the anti-intellectuals.
It’s not these twats.
Indigenous ways of knowing in New Zealand: I would love to see an actual curriculum. What is their “way of knowing” with respect to optics, organic chemistry, nuclear physics, computing, and linguistics? The epistemology of the native Maori, if you could even reconstruct it, would be utterly simple and often wrong. It is virtue run amok to think you can undo the wrongs of the past with “decolonization”.