Tuesday 28 October 2014

Russell's 'Brand' of Politics







Over the last year and especially in recent weeks Russell Brand, Comedian and of late orator on political issues, has been creating a bit of an exciting stir on his youtube blog, the news, and last week on prime time TV.
Russell held his ground in an interview with Newsnight anchor Evan Davis, whom Brand led on a merry dance concerning contemporary socio-political issues.
It is totally refreshing and amazing to see and hear on TV the truth about matters that concern all of us which are rarely brought out into the open, the public is never given chance to hear an alternative message other than the tightly controlled top down  narrative ....
German Sociologist Philosopher Herbert Marcus discussed this in his book 'One Dimensional Man' when he said, "One dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information, their universe of discourse populated by self validating hypotheses which incessantly and monopolistically repeated become hypnotic definitions of dictations.' This sums up so well what we see and hear via mass media, the one dimensional portrayal fed to the public giving no alternative. So hearing Russell Brand raise these issues was incredible, 'Yes' he is a man on a journey toward better understanding as we all are but he is reading, listening and identifying with the poor and marginalised. That's a pretty good start! Next book to read could be his 'Revolution'.

Bibliography

Marrcuse, H. (1991) One Dimensional Man, London, Routledge.




Thursday 23 October 2014

The last few weeks....



Into the sixth session of a 12 week portraiture course in Norwich with tutor Liz Balkwill,
going back to my roots in developing and improving techniques...here are some sketches charcoal and pastel work being developed at the moment...