065 - LUBLIN calling 1

065 - LUBLIN calling 1
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

This is another image from the same session, this one based on London Calling by the Clash.

It is easy to complain about the way that the world is, but I want to at least make the attempt to make a difference. Oner of the biggest stumbling blocks for people in Lublin is that they have spent their lives listening to the media and the people in power going on and on about how more important tradition is to anything else, to the extent that people cannot no longer imagine the world any other way.

This is one of the most expensive regions to live in, produces huge volumes of university level graduates and yet is one of the poorest regions in Europe.

Time for change. Time for a new clash of culture. Time to make room for a better future.

064 - Our Town

064 - Our Town
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

This image got us banned from a Flikr group that historically was open to all kinds of images.

Do you know why eventually all groups and societies die? Well, ignoring those which are destroyed through war, pestilence and other external agencies, or which disintegrate through internal friction between members, all groups have a natural lifespan that depends on interest.

Groups are generally established by someone or some group of people having a dynamic idea. Common interest draws people together and innovation occurs. Eventually, the innovators move onto other interests and those remaining who could take over are generally ousted by the kind of people primarily interested in maintaining the now established hierarchy. People who believe strongly in hierarchy tend to have weak care for people, and eventually this weak care for people, whose needs change over time, leads to the situation where the group's focus becomes increasingly out of step with the changing world.

Those people who could change the group's focus are treated shabbily by the hierarchists, who only care to continue the past as they believe what was will continue to be. A second issue is that people who believe in hierarchy will also import ideas from other hierarchies they are involved in, further narrowing the potential of the group.

The funny thing about this image being banned is that we made it as part of a program to reignite innovation from our moribund city of Lublin, which as a result of the work of hierarchists was the poorest region of all the nations that joined the EU in 2004. Some of the new hierarchists in the group we were banned from has imported their sex tabboo ideas from their culture into the group and WHAM!

This is my wife, she is not in a sex position but in a dynamic playful position, much as one would take when playing with a child or animal, she is ready to dance, to run.

She is also a woman. And despite being middle aged she is not ready to be discarded on the scrapheap just because the hierarchists in society want to condemn her to a nanny role because they cannot deal with anything else..

099 - Movie Poster

099 - Movie Poster
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

This was me playing around with Gimp, and just to prove I can still just have an idea, gather up some relevant looking articles from around our apartment and then put it all together using nothing more than a small digital camera and some photo editing software.

There are lots of influence here from book covers from the 1970s, which I remember browsing through at the local supermarket with my younger brother while our dad did the shopping. Education is a strange thing, it pretends to be supplying the things you need for a working life in our society, but since we all contain some amount of innovation, the source for parts of or whole ideas can come from any source at any time. Taking an image like this I could spend hours or days analysing the sources of all that I have put into it and even then I cannot say for sure that the list will be anywhere near complete. If I asked my brother for help, he may see things that I have consciously forgotten.

Of course, the main source for the idea was a film that I have long known of but never seen - Driller Killer. Which you can download for free as it no longer has any owners. I have half-dreaded, half desired to watch the film, but now having made this picture I am not sure I need to any more, I seem to have used up whatever I needed fromit.

063 - Infinity

063 - Infinity
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

I nearly had one like this finished when my save failed when Gimp stalled out part way through. Luckily I was able to save the writing, and this time I had a simpler idea for constructing the corridor plus I could remember some of the settings I had used for various filters.

I took a whole series of images down in a friend's basement, and only took this one as we had been scrabbling in the dark and were not sure if the corridor went any further. I didn't, but it does now, all the way to the end of life. The event lined up with several things I had been writing about, such that when you attempt an unknown action you get a surprise, that a failure is an opportunity as the brain seems to work better with some adversity, and that poor quality in one direction is someone else's good quality in another direction.

I like basements, and the communal passages for this one interconnect across several buildings. This is the third basement image I have done, ever, and all recently, and I think they make a good location for adversity, especially ones involving fear, and you can play around in them when the weather is less than friendly to being outside.

098 - Valentine Massacre

098 - Valentine Massacre
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

My wife headed off to Chicago to teach a course there for a week or so. I really miss her, so I made this.

Ever wished you could do something, like play the guitar? What is stopping you?

I want to make pictures, so I made myself a guitar out of a cardboard box. I had to edit it a lot and up the contrast of the picture to make it work.

I want to make my wife happy, and show her how I feel. So I did what I knew I could do, and I only know I can because once in the past I took a risk and tried. Sometimes what blocks us is not knowing enough about the process, so we have to believe in the eventual success enough to keep us from thinking about what we don't know now and what problems we still need to overcome.

I work quickly so I don't get slowed down by worries, and as a consequence I let my subconscious help out by not trying to control what I am doing too much. I let the practice of doing give me better skill, and I am not afraid to play around.

I keep the image simple and uncluttered, so it is easier to focus on the essential relations between things. In the past artists working on large commissions might get other people to fill in the scenery or minor characters so they could focus less on paint and more on the relationships between the elements in the image.

some people say artists in the past were better because they had to grind and mix their own paints. This is rubbish, you grind and mix paints because you either have no other choice or because you enjoy it. If an artist grew and cooked his own meals, grew the materials for the canvas and wooden frames, made brushes and all the rest required to get a human to the point of applying paint to canvas there would not be time enough to paint.

We get choices about what we do, and we get other people to do the rest. Then we die. If we think there are no choices, we are not really thinking. We live from moment to moment, and no one can control all of those moments, so there are always moments we can make choices about what we think.

I found some moments in a very stressful week, where I had to make some really hard decisions, to think about the woman I truly love. This is part of the result.

EDGY040 city planners

EDGY040 city planners
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

We have a project to help our city, and Poland in general, to achieve a new vision. The eastern side of Poland, 'on the right bank of the Vistula River' as they say, is called Poland B. Historically, when Poland was partitioned throughout the entire nineteenth century and a bit on either side, Germany got a bit, the Austro-Hungarian empire got a bit, and the rest was taken by Russia. The German influenced parts were left with a pro-active world view while the Russian parts got 'can't do, won't do, where's my Kielbasa?'

Enter me.

Lublin today has several universities pumping out educated people, and yet this is still the poorest region, and the problem is most graduates come from the region. When Lublin wants to publish itself, it starts warbling about the past, and then sits back and awaits everyone to come running. They don't, particularly.

We are going to write a book using our images that shows a different Lublin, a different Poland B, a different Poland.

A nation is really just a bunch of people and some stuff lying around, nothing else exists except what you believe in. If you believe that life was better in the past and you deserve something because of that past what you get is a poor present. Imagine you whined on about how once, a century or more ago you used to have a fine field full of good crops every year, then a bull got in one year and destroyed it. Today you don't look after your field properly because of the problems your ancestors had, and instead of doing something you whined about how poor everything looks, and you keep looking out of the window for a miracle to happen in your field. That's Lublin.

The field is still here, the potential is still here, the sun is shining, so why don't you get off your ass and do something.

Because you don't believe.

What we are doing is taking the same stuff and we are looking at it in new ways. We are not going to wait for a miracle, we are going to do the things that will make the miracle happen.

That's belief. And everything that you enjoy is there because other people believed.