We are not kings.
We’re not even pretenders to the throne. We meet, and we dream. And then we try and work out how to stitch and play and scribble and beat our dreams into things that can be seen and touched and heard. We dare to dream of better times. Of times that are less obsessed with money, with image, with things that simply – when all is stripped away – do not matter.
We’re not blinkered or unworldly – we understand the need to work and earn a living. But we do challenge the status quo. We challenge relentless dumbing down. We challenge materialism and greed, and we challenge the encouragement of a selfish individualism that isolates people from one another.
Some would call us failures, for turning our back on conventional ways of making art or making money. Maybe we are. But if this is failure, we kind of like it!
Join us in our failure.
Let’s create a community where we work alongside one another and help each other. There is nothing more bland than ordinary. And people want you to be ordinary. If you’re ordinary, you pose no threat. However, if you fancy becoming extraordinary, it’s easy. You just need to start doing. Making. If you create, I’m afraid you’re not ordinary anymore.
Work with those around you: your friends, your family. Or total strangers! Reach out to people with you work and see what happens. Don’t be scared of being revolutionary. People will hate you and love you for your work in equal measure, so just do whatever it is that calls you.
We do not have to be the children of a mass culture – we just need to open our eyes. When we do, we see that we are the children of our own environment, culture and society and that becoming a challenge to all that is popular is achieved simply by changing our state of mind.
Change is now. Turn off the television, stop self-medicating, throw out the corn syrup, stop saying “thank you” for things you don’t want or need. Instead, ask yourself what you are and why you have become the person you are. Think critically. Take the risk. Be the failure.
Stop being ordinary, and start posing a threat.
We are not kings.
Written by Juju, edited by Charlie Covell.