Letters to the Editor: Giving a Platform

Sent to the I's 'Voices' section, in response to an article on the recent All Party Parliamentary Group report on prostitution.

I would like to congratulate your paper on balancing your article on the parliamentary report on prostitution (March 3) with the views of an actual sex worker. The voices of sex workers are those that should be heard the loudest in this debate, and all too often they are ignored or sidelined. There is significant criticism of and opposition to the Nordic model from sex workers and former sex workers, including journalists, activists and academics, both in the UK and abroad, that simply cannot be dismissed (as it often is) as apologia produced by sex industry insiders.

A Black Sun in a White World

A Black Sun in a White World
Digital Print
2014

A Black Sun in a White World was a book project I worked on a couple of years ago. Originally a limited edition of six books with hand-made covers, containing no text, their contents being a hole burned through the centre of all the pages (but not the cover) using a soldering iron and a small butane blowtorch. I have recently been considering updating and re-working this idea; I want to have a variety of books ready to (hopefully) take to some Artist's Book fairs this Autumn, including some new hand-made books. I am also toying with the idea of creating a sort of production line for my own 'altered books', creating some sort of design that can be printed using print-on-demand services, and then hand-altered by myself to create something more interesting. This is something I have already done to an extent with the book Manifest-O, which must be 'completed' by the reader by cutting along the dotted lines to create cut-out panels.

A New Year, a New Book.

I have completed my latest book under my real name, Speak of the Devil. It is available for purchase via lulu.com here. If you simply wish to peruse the book in PDF form, you can do so here. The images can be seen in an imgur album here.

So, a new year begins. 2013 has been a mixed year for me. I completed my MA studies at the Arts University Bournemouth, but after that I feel like I have been in something of a doldrums for the latter half of the year. Commissions, sales and other work have been slow, inspiration has been frequently lacking, job applications have (as is so often the case) been pointless investments of time and emotional effort. I have started a few projects that have not made much headway, and have felt for the most part somewhat lost. However, over the past couple of months, traditionally my period of deepest winter depression, things have started to pick up. I shall learn my lesson from many past cock-ups and not make any predictions, but I have a feeling that 2014 is going to be a very good, productive year for me, and I hope there's going to be a lot of interesting material coming out.

Another recent development is that I have made a new deviantart account (I had one years ago, when I was a teen, but it has long since gone the way of all flesh). You can see it here. It mainly showcases my speculative illustrations, produced as DS Blake, but there are also sections where you can see some of the work I produce under my regular name. The main purpose of this account is to allow people an avenue via which they can easily purchase prints of my work; I plan to research and expand to other services which allow this sort of thing over the next few months, and I have a few other interesting things on the go.

Here's to a good 2014.

The Glimmercage Urists: A New Book by DS Blake

 My first book under the name of DS Blake, my sobriquet for fantasy illustration, is now available for purchase via lulu.com.
 
The Glimmercage Urists

Speak of the Devil (essay)

This essay is written in the same 'academic stream of consciousness' style that will be familiar to anyone who's read my previous books (particularly Utopia/Dystopia), and should be read with that in mind. It forms the first section of a small book that has suddenly come to me (and been half-completed) over the last few days. This book is entitled 'Speak of the Devil', and will be on the subject of the relationship between celebrity, mass media, the society of the spectacle and serious crime. The second section, that completes the book, consists of portraits of 23 of the most infamous and iconic criminals in British history.

The Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

I found this sorting through some old files on old external hard drives and found this. It dates from about five years ago (Keyboard cat was current and stumbleupon worth mentioning, so I would guess 2008), and predates the stealing of the title by other, minor authors. Grr. Given that, many of the references in this are already woefully and painfully out of date, if they were even in-date in the first place. I present it as a curio.

Next Major Book: Conspiracy Protocols

Things have been very quiet on the Idle Toil front over the past month or so. There are reasons for this; I've been engaged in a lot of personal and job-related matters, and I'm re-modelling my bedroom, which has cut off my access to books, art materials and my main desktop computer. All this has left me in something of a creative rut.

I have though, finally, decided on the topic and title of my next major artist's book. Finally, without the artificial deadline of a submission date, I hope to be able to really get every detail of this work absolutely perfect; I suspect it may end up taking a year or more to complete to my satisfaction. It's title (for the moment) is: CONSPIRACY PROTOCOLS.

 

This will be a book about conspiracism, a topic of deep and perennial fascination to me. It will explore conspiracism not just as a political, social or historical phenomenon, but also as a body of literature, as a belief system, and as an aesthetic. Particularly, it will explore the emergence, in the internet age, of a culture of conspiracy that transcends certain traditional political boundaries. It will explore the fascinating connections between conspiracism and western esotericism, and the concept of conspiracism as a branch of occultism. 

It has become apparent in recent years that previous attempts at understanding conspiracism are becoming inadequate in the 21st century. It now seems inadequate to view conspiracism as a 'paranoid style' applied to other political movements; increasingly conspiracism is becoming an end unto itself; a total ideology with common features that unite adherents on the far left and the far right, creating a world of political slippage where Noam Chomsky and Francis Yockey can be quoted side by side. A shadowy world of con-artists, entryists, manipulators, demagogues, visionaries, cultists, rogue academics, double-crossers and esotericists more murky and fascinating than the shadowy conspiracies that obsess its adherents. Central to it all is an occult belief system that combines elements of new age philosophies, psychoanalysis, gnosticism and apocalyptic christianity: a system of secret powers, secret symbols, rituals, mind-control and technological magic. It shall be an interesting ride.