Julia Manheim - groving / Acts of Resistance

Julia Manheim's small artwork has appeared in Abbeygate Street, Bury St Edmunds today as part of the new groving exhibition. Words come from Kevin Acott.

Read this aloud and as quickly as possible. We don’t have much time.

I want to tell you about this geezer - diamond geezer - drank Double Diamond most of the time this geezer did, at least in photos, you know what I mean? It’s tough right now, I understand that, he says, some of my best friends, many of my fans, are diamonds in the rough too, he says, like you, he says, trust me he says, I’m one of you he says, just trust me, I get what you’re going through, it’s tough - so tough - but I’ll make it all go away, trust me I’ll make it right, I’m one of you, always have been...

On the radio in the USA, they say, when I was still at school, there was a DJ called Dave Diamond (look him up) who was funny and clever and wise and kind, wisely played the fool, and flicked and kicked and twisted words (in a good way), hit his listeners' truth and hope all over the baseball diamond of their shared lives, he was a girl’s best friend was Dave Diamond...

Anyway, back to Double Diamond Man: he drops Latin into his conversations with us and is adamant (get it?) he only lets us know what he knows because he’s one of us, even got a bus once, sits in pubs and - though we all know adamao (the root of the word) means ‘I tame’ or ‘I subdue’ in Greek - he still fools enough of us enough of the time. Diamonds are forever, after all.


Read this next bit more slowly.

1) Did you know diamonds refract?
They deflect the straight path of light.
2) I think we’re all, in essence, blood diamonds. In this time of conflict we sit while he uses us to fund his efforts to make war, to forge ugliness from beauty.
3) We should make Dave Diamond our leader. Before it’s too late.

Kevin Acott 

Julia Manheim's work has encompassed contemporary jewellery, public art projects, sculpture, installation and video. As grove resident artist in July this year, Julia walked through Bury St Edmunds and the discarded objects that she found took on a new life in a beautiful  installation.  See www.quay2c.com/index.php/m2/detail/julia_manheim1

Kevin Acott is a writer, lecturer, whiskey lover, and Spurs sufferer. He’s a sort of left libertarian/sort of anarchist who feels strangely attracted to French chansons, Greenland and Joseph Conrad as he gets older. His own acts of resistance have included wearing socks with ‘Tuesday’ on them on a Thursday and ordering coffee before the starter

Alison Carlier - groving / Acts of Resistance

Alison Carlier's piece has found an appropriate home on a window sill at the top end of Guildhall Street. 

As I write this I’m thinking about Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk in Memphis, Tennessee. I’m driving down to New Orleans (the Ipswich of Louisiana) tomorrow and I’ve just been reading something Martin Luther King said: that the real opponents of equality, the real defenders of hate and bigotry, are not the racist right but moderate whites ‘who prefer order to justice’. I wonder what he’d make of our big-small British fears here, now? And I wonder how he would pick his way through the swamps of ‘identity’ we find ourselves negotiating, dodging tweeted bullets and tube-carriage abuse as we go?

They want us to be divided into ‘Remoaners’ or ‘Brexshiteers’, to feel one thing or the other, to render the other side unhuman, because they benefit if we do. The narrow, twisted little haters benefit. The clever, clean, privileged liberals benefit. The rest of us are left feeling a kind of resigned despair and try to close our eyes while they loot all the hope from our flooded hearts.

I think somewhere, deep down, we all know the truth: the truth that we each - every single one of us - have Brexity bits and Remainy bits. And that we each have a whole host of bigotries and fears and creepy-crawly darknesses, but just don’t want to admit it. And when they give us a Rubik’s cube and tell us we can easily solve it if only we saw it for the simple child’s game it really is, we believe them...

I nearly voted for Brexit. I nearly voted for Brexit because the EU is undemocratic and unjust, because it sadistically assaulted the Greek people, because it wilfully punished refugees, because it solidifies a fake-liberal, destructive capitalism which benefits - of course! - the few... and because Coca-Cola (oh yes!) sponsored the EU Presidency.

I nearly voted for Brexit because I mistrust those with power, because I mistrust the Clintons as much as I mistrust the Trumps, because I mistrust The Guardian as much as the Express... and because I mistrust the BBC as much as Sky.

I nearly voted for Brexit because the middle-classes didn’t want it, because Crouch End really didn’t want it at all, because I think I probably became a sort-of Socialist as a kid because I envied and admired and wanted to hurt my Mail-reading, sweet and distant Dad... and, I admit, because it’s fun to throw everything up into the air and see where it lands: order, followed by chaos, followed by rebirth.

I didn’t vote for Brexit in the end. Jo Cox was murdered and I realised I just couldn’t do it: and that, if I’m honest, was about as thoughtful and considered as I got as I walked into the booth.

So. Which is the true ‘democratic’ option now, three years on? I’ve no idea. I just know if we don’t acknowledge the devil in ourselves, the Christ in ourselves, the nurse in ourselves, the patient in ourselves, the refugee in ourselves, the border guard in ourselves, the Farage in ourselves, the Jean-Claude Juncker in ourselves... we’re done for.

This isn’t really another plea for unity. It is instead, I think, a plea for us to recognise and value our own individual disunities, to try to love our own order and disorder, our own justices and injustices, for us to celebrate them and to mock them, to let uncertainty seduce us, have its way with us, spill all over us. A desire for order, for certainty is the real enemy of resistance: three years on from my/your act of emotional cross-in-boxing, I’m sure of that.

Kevin Acott

Alison Carlier studied fine art at Surrey Institute of Art & Design and has an MA in Drawing from Wimbledon College of Arts. She went on to win the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2014, the first entry for a sound piece. She has exhibited widely, including at Fratton Festival of Light, Portsmouth; Netpark, Southend on Sea; Aspex, Portsmouth; National Gallery, London. She was awarded the Alexandra Reinhardt Residency and Commission in 2016.

Kevin Acott is a writer, lecturer, whiskey lover, and Spurs sufferer. He’s a sort of left libertarian/sort of anarchist who feels strangely attracted to French chansons, Greenland and Joseph Conrad as he gets older. His own acts of resistance have included wearing socks with ‘Tuesday’ on them on a Thursday and ordering coffee before the starter.

eMotion at the Tate Modern

Submissions are now closed for eMotion

In 2016 we created our Relationship Map for Mental Health Awareness Week. It was a large scale artwork that charted people's life connections using the London Tube map. After its success we're back in 2019 with a new interactive map that will be exhibited at the Tate Modern from 11th-16th June. It will be part of the Ideas in Motion: borders, bodies, and the universe exhibition at the Tate Modern, Blavatnik Building, Level 5, Bankside, London SE1 9TG.

More info at https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tate-exchange/workshop/ideas-motion-borders-bodies-and-universe

Our artwork is eMotion: Emotional Transitions in Healthcare. Ill-health requires us to make transitions: to move emotionally, spiritually, socially, physically. We adjust from being 'healthy' to being 'ill', from ‘independence’ to ‘dependence’ and back again. The project highlights the joys and fear of impermanence, of the changes that occur every second, minute and hour of our lives. It embraces movement as normal, as part of the flow of life – something that should neither be resisted nor forced. 

We’ve built a huge interactive floor map, in the style of a tube map, which has ‘end stations’ labelled with key points of ‘stasis’. The ‘station stops’ in between are open for people to explore how they navigate these transitions. We would like your help in creating a map so that visitors at the Tate can navigate a path along these routes of transition. 

Please contribute your words below and be part of the exhibit. Your name will be printed on the map and exhibited at the Tate Modern.

We have nine “lines” in our eMotion map, each starting and finishing with people, places or things that you might move between during your life:

Health – Illness

Dependence – Independence

Home – Hospital

Life – Death 

Young – Old 

Hope – Fear

Certainty – Uncertainty

Me - You

Doctor - Patient

There are three blank “stops” for each line. We want you to fill in the blank stops for as many lines as you want, which best sum up how you connect these concepts. Write a title or name (no longer than 4 words) that describes each stop on your journey. For example: what does it feel like to be in the middle between Hope to Fear, or closer to Hope, or closer to Fear. You could write something like: Hope – Last Minute Corner – First Game of Season – One Nil Up – Fear.

We'll be working with Harvey Wells, Kevin Acott and the team at 

Queen Mary University of London

Relationship Map 2016

Last Day - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Thank you to everyone who has supported our Love Tokens and Bad Pennies exhibition. From artists to writers, and not forgetting all of you who have been out looking for artworks and getting involved online. After placing artworks out on the streets for 30 days we reach the end of the exhibition. Today we are posting the final artworks, some have written pieces to accompany them and some exist on their own. We will try and write an update in the next few weeks, visiting some of the locations and see if the artworks still rest in the #unsettledgallery spaces.

The next exhibition is the Art of Caring at St George's Hospital in May (and then onto St Pancras Hospital in July). The deadline is 7th April 2019 so please send in your artwork (It's free to enter) and support the nurses, carers and the NHS. http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/p/submit.html

Tracy Boness - #unsettledgallery No.8, London Bridge

Art - Tracy Boness / Words -  Francesca Albini

Precious and frayed,

Tangled and free,

Caught in a net,

Sparkling diamonds,

Our love

Eternal

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Melanie Honebone

Art - Melanie Honebone / Words - Ed Arantus 

That knot in the pine brow

A cut near the front eye

The moon is high; from sides of the world where nightmares grow

You made all my fears and,

You held them in raptures

But there's no magic without death you said

You are a belief, short rotting

A prophecy dying on a dull mind

You can save your second coming,

I'm not the kind you need to pray for

Now I know where we went wrong

Growing green branches from dead wood

And I still swear that you can’t save me

Even when push, came to push, came to shove

Well you can swallow that sweet breath baby,

Until your death is the magic of love.

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Stella Tripp

Art - Stella Tripp / Words - Kevin Acott

One World

People have asked me what Nelson would think about Trump and all the hate swirling across the earth. Sometimes I tell them they should listen to The Three Great Alabama Icons by Drive-By Truckers. Sometimes I tell them Nina accused Nelson once of being 'no better than the rest of your people'. Sometimes I ask them why they really want to know.

The first and last interview I did with Nelson, he was drunk, drunker even than other people had led me to expect. We were in his room in some crappy hotel in Mile End and at one point he started talking about desire and Muddy Waters and - of all people - Bertrand Russell. He said Russell was convinced desire dictated everything we did, good and bad. To Nelson, Russell’s ‘desire’ wasn't about sex. He meant, instead, that even when we try to do good, it's because of desire: our desire to possess, to compete and overcome other people, to look good in the eyes of the world, to have power over ourselves, others, the whole world. To become, ultimately, God.

He told me all this and I listened and tried to follow and tried to make notes and then I watched him tip gently back onto the bed and start snoring.

So. We want the best for others because we want to become God. Nelson's 'Kissinger Blues' was, I'd always thought, simply about how there's something evil in each of us, a Kissinger, a Hitler, a Trump. But in that East End hotel, I suddenly realised it wasn't that straightforward: have a look at/listen to the YouTube video of Nelson playing it at Glastonbury in '75 and the extra, rambling verses and see what he does with the song he'd once vowed never to play again: he's saying (I think) that by pretending to have good motives for being good, rather than accepting the universality of desire, of egocentricity, we not only miss the point, we find ourselves unable to truly fight racism, hate, division. I could tell you I'm writing this purely because I want to convince you of the genius of Chopsticks Nelson and help preserve his memory. But I also want to accrue, to possess, I also want you to respect me and give me power and a way of being, however temporary, that makes me feel good. And - if we can both accept that – we can eventually find peace and love and the joy of singing a single, shared song. 

From the epilogue to 'Chopsticks Nelson: A Southern Life' by Kevin Acott (2019).

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Dean Reddick

Art - Dean Reddick /  Placement - Walthamstow

To see all the posts from this exhibition in one thread then click here - http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/search/label/Love%20Tokens%20and%20Bad%20Pennies

Dean Reddick - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Dean Reddick-Bad penny

Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turn up? During this Valentine month the artists and writers from CollectConnect explore this flip-sided theme with an exhibition of 32 miniature sculptures. These objects are placed in public places (#unsettledgallery), helping us to remember those who we hold dear - or cast off those who we would rather forget. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these tokens/pennies on this website. A writer will also use the art as inspiration to create something new and fresh.

Art - Dean Reddick / Words -  Chopsticks Nelson

No Point

I remember Nina telling me a joke in Paris one night about sticking a finger in a dyke. She was shocked at how shocked I was. I was shocked at how shocked she was at how shocked I was, and we realised how little we knew each other. I know now that was the moment we chose to try to find each other and that was the moment that condemned us forever to looking at each other from afar.

Nina left Paris before me and I met Dalida soon after and Dalida was beautiful and doomed and sad and hated Americans and hated the blues and every time she beckoned me to her in that Italian, Egyptian, Martian way of hers, I thought about Nina. One broke Spring day I wrote a song for Dalida based on an old Django thing I half-remembered from Vancouver and every time she drank too much wine, she'd demand I sing it, wherever we were. I remember jumping on stage and pushing an old jazz man out of the way once at Le Bar Blomet and playing it, just to make her smile. By the time I'd finished, she'd already left the place and I wouldn't see her for a week.

I can't remember the words of D's song at all. It's funny: I could play you every note, every chord, I could tell you what I was thinking every time I sang it, what she was wearing. But the words have all gone, even the title has disappeared. I suspect Nina removed it from my mind, some time between Paris and Greensboro.

From 'Chopsticks Nelson: In His Own Words', published by Faber (1984)

Dean Reddick's Bad Penny on a tree limb 

at the #unsettledgallery Epping Forest

Epping Forest is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, bordering London and Essex and is an Ancient Woodland, one of the few left in London. The sculptor Jacob Epstein lived on the edge of the Forest. Nowadays the Forest is used by dog walkers, mountain bikers, horse and pony riders and picnicking friends and families as well as footballers, bird watchers and runners. I like to imagine all the lovers who might have left their own love tokens in the forest over the centuries. The Forest has also had its share of Bad Pennies reaching up to the present day.
Take a walk through the Forest and see if you can find a Love Token or a Bad Penny.

John 'Chopsticks' Nelson 

John 'Chopsticks' Nelson (February 14th, 1926 – July 13th, 1979) was an American blues singer, guitarist, actor and composer. Notoriously reclusive and hostile to both media and fans alike, Nelson remained a little-known but passionately-followed figure in the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia for much of his life, before becoming more widely known with the release of 'They Call Me Chopsticks' in 1976. 

Originally a backing singer and session guitarist, he contributed to many albums by other musicians, including Sonny Boy Williamson, The Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters.

Over the course of his career, Nelson's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension, culminating in the controversial 1974 triple album, 'God, Allah and Yahweh' and live shows that became a focus for attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Nelson remains one of the most influential - if least understood - bluesmen in music history. He died in a hunting accident in West Virginia the day after his fourth album entered the Billboard charts at Number Two in July, 1979.

https://twitter.com/ChopsticksNels1

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist, occasional lecturer and editor on the Art Therapy Journal ATOL. He has a small studio space at his home in Walthamstow where he works on sculptures and drawings often based on his fascination with birds and trees. 

Don't forget to submit to our next exhibition. The Art of Caring is accepting submission until the 7th April 2019. More HERE.

Year 2035 - Bethany Murray - #smallworldfutures

Bethany Murray, Snowsfields, London, UK, #unsettledgallery No.8

Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Bethany Murray
The year is 2035....

The Point

He wandered the earth for a few weeks after The Great Comeback. He met up with old mates, his parents, his disciples. Well, eleven of them, anyway. Everyone who met him felt calmer, surer. Everyone felt a little less angry. He seemed, for a while, like a bit of a force for good. A mate of mine - a PA to Pontius Pilate - said even The Prefect spoke well of him.

We weren’t all so impressed though. Some of us wondered why he didn’t do more. He could have done anything he wanted - anything. He could’ve made a real difference. But no. He had A Cunning Plan, apparently. And one afternoon - forty days after - he gathered a few of us together on a hill and we watched him Ascend. Just like that. That grief-stricken night, he called me and I followed him Upstairs: what else could I do? I was a little flattered, to be honest. And a little scared. And a little ecstatic. He was so, so lonely. Always had been. I think the sharp, dark anomie he’d always carried with him like a sack of rocks finally got to him. What do you do after you’re Resurrected? After you’ve made your point? After you’ve made The Point? I knew what I’d done, what we’d all done. That too helped me make the decision to join him.

Time nodded past us. Years, decades, centuries. We sat, the two of us, in his father’s place and talked and sang and watched what was happening down there and reminisced. I apologised. I apologised so much.

Together, we watched acts of kindness, of sweetness. We watched The Inquisition. We watched games of Scrabble and stand-up comedy. We watched The Holocaust. We watched love-making and cheese-eating. We watched The Trump War. And then, one day - October, 2035 - He announced he was going to go back. He asked me if I wanted to go with him. But it felt wrong. ‘I’d rather not,’ I said.

I watched him. I watched him Descend and announce Himself. Some laughed when they met him. After a week or so wandering, chatting and sunbathing in The Secular State Of Israel, he took The SpaceHopper, for some reason, to The Free And Proud Kingdom Of England (c) (TM). And people there told him to go back to where he came from.

And then he went to Greater Russia - to Moscow and to Krakow and to Ljubljana - and to the Beneath-The-Wall Southern States - to Texas and to Louisiana and to Mexico. He spoke to people, performed miracles, started delivering speeches, sermons - in ShopMalls, on the MindWeb and in Insert.

I think I saw what was happening before he did. They were interpreting. They were twisting. They were skewing his words. All dully predictable, of course. They started to wrench his words to fit their ideas, their hates, their desires. Some said He was the reincarnation of The Great Boris. Some that he was the new Martin Luther King. A group in France said that he was Johnny Hallyday.

He stuck with the stuff that had always (sort of) worked: be kind, be nice. But I watched him getting older, tireder. He did a lot of bathing of sinners, men and women, boys and girls, and he was soon ‘exposed’ as a sex pest (#Christperv). They started a campaign to have him banned from universities.

I wondered for a while if I should - if I could - go Downstairs and help. But I knew that what was happening was all part - consciously or unconsciously - of his plan. One night - after an expose on BBC MindWeb’s ‘CrushACeleb’- he spoke to me from a motel room in Carolina. ‘Too much. Time to die,’ was all he said. In Aramaic. And I watched him open a bottle of whiskey and I watched him open a bottle of pills and I watched him die a second human death and I watched them bury him, bury him as one of them. I cried. I cried for days.

There was no Ascension this time. I gradually realised he knew all of this would happen, knew the message this time would be so much more powerful without the party tricks. And I decided then: I needed to go down there. I knew what I had to do.

I think you do too.

Kevin Acott

Bethany Murray

You can find Bethany Murray's Small World Future between two concrete bollards where Weston Street meets St Thomas Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

As an artist Bethany Murray takes seemingly empty space, juxtaposing it with physical matter in an attempt to make the intangible tangible. Through the use of cast space, poetry and found objects she attempt to describe a sense of ‘otherness’. Exploring the distinction between the known and unknown that is directly linked to her research of the ‘sacred’. These mere encounters with material and language sit in the hinterland between that which is considered earthly and the ethereal.
http://bethanymurray-artist.blogspot.co.uk/

Kevin Acott is a London-based model, cult singer and poet. He divides his creative time between writing, photography and collaborative projects. His stories and poems can be found on the websites Sad Paradise, Londonist, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Ink, Sweat And Tears. In 2017 he dedicated six months to travelling and writing. Starting in North Carolina (USA) he eventually ended his adventures in Limoux, France. Along the way Acott spent a month as writer-in-residence in Qaqortoq (Greenland) where he wrote several short stories. He has released several books with publisher Sampson Low and is currently working toward a one-man show at this year's Crouch End Festival in June 2018.

www.kevinacott.com

Year 2048/9 - Alan Carlyon Smith - #smallworldfutures

Alan Carlyon Smith, #unsettledgallery no.4

Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of....Alan Carlyon Smith
The year is 2048/9

Sex
Sex. How dare we?
We look back to freedom
And the short years
Of sweet balance.

Sex. Born in 1963.
We leap back to the mornings
We censored nothing
And consent was not funny.

Sex. Died in 2047.
We once walked into minds
Which caressed bodies
With all the hope we had.

No longer.

Sex. Is it possible to fuck without either love or abuse? For years we clung hopelessly to nuance and to complexity and to the kisses of uncertainty. Now we reminisce endlessly about the clothes we wore and the tingles we felt and the laughing and the larking and the love we exchanged before they occupied us from left and from right, filled us with twittering hate and a million selves defined by pitch-forked opposition. Now we yield to the self-theft of freedom from desire and to the absence of bridges that once took us from man to woman and back again.

Once upon a time there was a difference between acceptance and approval.

No longer.

Kevin Acott

Alan Carlyon Smith

You can find Alan Carlyon Smith's Small World Future behind a wire fence on Snowsfields, London Bridge, next to #unsettledgallery No.4. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Alan Carlyon Smith is an artist and curator currently working from his studio in Wimbledon. He has curated a number of exhibitions at the Shaw Gallery in Croydon, including The Jade Event, Art Jazzed Up and Ballet Russes. The latter involved the London Russian Ballet School performing in the Mitre Theatre. Smith enjoys exhibiting his art in the public domain and regularly contributes work to the Art of Caring at the Rose Theatre (Kingston), St George's Hospital (Tooting) and St Pancras Hospital. In 2015 his work was included in the 70th Anniversary of Korean Liberation International Art Exhibition in Seoul. As a studio artist he works in a range of mediums and has been shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery.
www.wimbledonartstudios.co.uk/alan-carlyon-smith/

Kevin Acott is a London-based model, cult singer and poet. He divides his creative time between writing, photography and collaborative projects. His stories and poems can be found on the websites Sad Paradise, Londonist, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Ink, Sweat And Tears. In 2017 he dedicated six months to travelling and writing. Starting in North Carolina (USA) he eventually ended his adventures in Limoux, France. Along the way Acott spent a month as writer-in-residence in Qaqortoq (Greenland) where he wrote several short stories. He has released several books with publisher Sampson Low and is currently working toward a one-man show at this year's Crouch End Festival in June 2018.
www.kevinacott.com

Year 2101 - Alban Low - #smallworldfutures

Alban Low, Weston Street, London Bridge, UK (#unsettledgallery No.1)

Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of....Alban Low
The year is 2101

Wheeze

It started with The Burning Of The Tower. A new way of being seemed possible. They told us they were sorry. Many of them meant it. They told us, ‘Change Will Happen’.

Our external world had always been Kindness v Money. And Money had always won. Because within each of us the battle is between Need and Desire. And Desire had always won. Night is always stronger than Day. Or was.

After The Burning Of The Tower, for a while we were breathing loud and wheezy, but we were breathing with possibility.

They tried at first to close the gaps, patch up the wounds, cover our mouths, fill the lung-holes with bullshit and Strictly and post-post-truth and my-identity-is-more-important-than-yours and splitting and spitting and hate.

Yet they could never fool us completely. And as we began to learn how to ignore them, we began to rebuild. First, the government went. Then all governments went. Then we set about looking at our darknesses, holding them out to others, holding them *for* others. The cladding was stripped away. We could be who we were, hiding neither our black nor our white.

Soon, we were raw and hurt and joyous and unbound. Many died. A God came, a Saviour. Then another and another. Some fell under their spell. But others - the majority - started to regain their curiosity, their love of truth, their open-aired doubt, their willingness to say, ‘I don’t know.’

Corporations began to slice themselves into small pieces, to turn towards communities, to sink themselves gently back into the people. And the people were happy. Most of them. Or - rather - most people were accepting, more whole, more aware, no longer striving for happiness or avoidant of pain. The new century, we agreed, would be a great one.

And then - in 2101 - came The Second Burning Of The Tower.

Kevin Acott

Alban Low

You can find Alban Low's Small World Future on the concrete barriers where Weston Street meets St Thomas Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Alban Low is involved in many creative projects, these include album artwork, publishing chapbooks, making films, maps, conceptual exhibitions, live performance and good old drawing. He is artist-in-residence at the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at Kingston University and St George's University of London. Low spends his evenings in the jazz clubs of London where he captures the exhilaration of live performances in his sketchbook. On Wednesday evenings he sketches the performers on the radio show A World in London at Resonance FM. He is about to open an exhibition of these drawings at the Yehudi Menuhin Concert Hall on the 14th February 2018.

http://albanlow.com/

Kevin Acott

Kevin Acott is a London-based model, cult singer and poet. He divides his creative time between writing, photography and collaborative projects. His stories and poems can be found on the websites Sad Paradise, Londonist, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Ink, Sweat And Tears. In 2017 he dedicated six months to travelling and writing. Starting in North Carolina (USA) he eventually ended his adventures in Limoux, France. Along the way Acott spent a month as writer-in-residence in Qaqortoq (Greenland) where he wrote several short stories. He has released several books with publisher Sampson Low and is currently working toward a one-man show at this year's Crouch End Festival in June 2018.
www.kevinacott.com

Year 2118 - Alan Carlyon Smith - #SmallWorldFutures

Alan Carlyon Smith, Snowsfields, London Bridge,

#unsettledgallery No.4

Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world. 

Today we discover the Small World Future of....Alan Carlyon Smith

The year is 2118

What Can You Do?
Thank you for coming here. Thank you for coming to 2118, I know the cuts and The Terror have messed up Time Travel For London’s services but I have a story to tell you. And I know you’ve been here before but there’s something I need to emphasise before I begin. Here, when you decide to have a baby, you can choose whatever you like. A normal boy, an abnormal girl, an enigmatic and slightly flakey twin-spirit, a grumpy post-identity LGBTQQTGYSTA++ re-born, a saxophonist2B, a lion tamer2B, an Elvis impersonator2B. Just tick a box, pay your Thalers, wait nine months. Well, wait nine months and then another twenty or thirty years in some (2B) cases.

Sometimes, of course, it goes wrong. Our scientists are - how to be put it fairly? - a little distracted at times. The Elite don’t like scientists. We don’t like scientists, but of course we can’t kill them. Not since...you know...

Anyway. After much ‘discussion’ last year, we chose to have a President2B. I already have a minor-celebrity2B, a Spurs-defender2B and a Poet-Laureate2B. My wives both - like so many twin-spirits - wanted a President2B. I pushed against the idea for a while: what if he became a LabTor? What if he hated the Elite? What if he was assassinated? What if he brought about the end of the world? A president was bound to be trouble. Lucrative, OK, but trouble. And he’d have to - *have to* - become President by the age of thirty. Otherwise I’d be deliquesced before it happened - and I need at least a brief surge of pride before I shuffle off and re-enter space.

They changed the law last year, you may have missed it? 55 is the new EOUL. The end of useful life. You have that in your time? EOUL was 60 this time last year. They keep changing it. Which worries me a little, but what can you do? You deliquesce when they decide it’s time.

So, yes: the little one would have had to become President before I reach 55. We saved and saved and finally ordered a President2B. The excitement was palpable, even though Wife 1.0 changed her mind halfway through, said she’d really have preferred an Accountant2B.,

I know. I can see what you’re thinking. That’s no President2B. No, it’s not. What did we get? We got a Messiah. A bloody Messiah. Look at him. Cute, eh? And look at his Mother, 1.0. She’s taken to it like a duck to water. Even wearing all the old blue stuff and beaming beatifically. She looks like a kid again. In public, anyway. Jesus. If you’ll excuse my language. His other mother hasn’t stopped drinking and partying since it happened. She gave birth to half of him but she couldn’t care less. Or she cares too much - who can tell? Either way, it’s leaving me with far too much to do. I hardly have time to play with my abacus anymore.

Hmm. Apparently, there are only three Messiahs on earths. This one here, two in your time, none at all prior to 1932. They’re not - of course - Messiahs2B, they’re actual Messiahs. A Messiah doesn’t become, it just is. Though the two in your time aren’t recognised for what they are yet. May never be.

So. Now I’m the father of a Messiah. I’m a... a sort of Joseph. You never hear much about him, do you? He always took a back-seat to young Mary, sawing and hammering and sanding and being a silently typical man. I don’t intend to be like that. I’m going to say what I want. When I want. The days of the FemiNazis are over. Oh yes.

Could you... um... take him? With you, I mean? Could you take the baby back to your time? The truth is, I don’t want a Messiah for a son. I don’t want a Madonna for a wife. Or a whore, for that matter. I just want to be a scientist. And rid the earths of foreigners whenever I can.

Four hundred and sixty Thalers. Go on. The wives are asleep. Take Him. You’re hesitating? Why? Imagine what He can do for you! It’s win-win.

OK, five hundred. Good. Thank you. You know it makes sense. Best decision you’ve ever made. You’ve made a young man and his father very happy.

Kevin Acott 

You can find Alan Carlyon Smith's Small World Future tied to a wire fence on Snowsfields, London Bridge, next to #unsettledgallery No.4. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Alan Carlyon Smith is an artist and curator currently working from his studio in Wimbledon. He has curated a number of exhibitions at the Shaw Gallery in Croydon, including The Jade Event, Art Jazzed Up and Ballet Russes. The latter involved the London Russian Ballet School performing in the Mitre Theatre. Smith enjoys exhibiting his art in the public domain and regularly contributes work to the Art of Caring at the Rose Theatre (Kingston), St George's Hospital (Tooting) and St Pancras Hospital. In 2015 his work was included in the 70th Anniversary of Korean Liberation International Art Exhibition in Seoul. As a studio artist he works in a range of mediums and has been shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery.

www.wimbledonartstudios.co.uk/alan-carlyon-smith/

Kevin Acott

Kevin Acott is a London-based model, cult singer and poet. He divides his creative time between writing, photography and collaborative projects. His stories and poems can be found on the websites Sad Paradise, Londonist, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Ink, Sweat And Tears. In 2017 he dedicated six months to travelling and writing. Starting in North Carolina (USA) he eventually ended his adventures in Limoux, France. Along the way Acott spent a month as writer-in-residence in Qaqortoq (Greenland) where he wrote several short stories. He has released several books with publisher Sampson Low and is currently working toward a one-man show at this year's Crouch End Festival in June 2018.

www.kevinacott.com