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2023 RECAP ZINE
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My 64-page 2023 recap zine for my Patreon backers arrived back from the printers and has started shipping. There’s still time to sign up for £3.50 a month here and get your copy. This is just a little way of saying thank you to everyone who supports me on Patreon.
After these all go out, as long as there are some left then every three months new subscribers will get a copy until they run out. Then there will be a new zine for 2024.
If you had previously backed me on Patreon and had to cancel your subscription for whatever reason I’ve printed a few extra for you and I’ll be emailing shortly to ask for your address to send you a copy too. It’s only fair considering that I neglected that platform for quite a few years and people were still supporting me :)
I really enjoyed putting this together and I’m so happy with how they turned out. It’s nice to have an entire year’s work boiled down to a single publication rather than spread over the internet, and I honestly just love having an excuse to print on newsprint.
It was also fun as a trial run for an eventual collected book of my work that I’d love to do once I get settled in whatever new studio I (hopefully) end up in by this time next year.
Thanks to everyone who has backed me so far, and to everyone who gets stuff from my online shop or the Museum of Neoliberalism. It’s quite literally the reason I can afford to do this shit as my full time job.
SO THANK YOU!!
And onto the next thing!
X
Darren
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE GENOCIDE
From 1st March 2024:
I feel numb from this week’s news. From yesterday’s Israeli Flour Massacre of over 112 starving Palestinians who were simply trying to get food from aid trucks, to the unbearably sickening photo being passed around an Israeli telegram channel of one of the victims who has been zip-tied as a prisoner and then flattened into unrecognisable human paste by an Israeli tank. Every time I feel like we have reached a high-water mark of horror and suffering in Gaza, Israel raises the threshold of just how much barbarism Western politicians and journalists can apparently accept and attempt to justify.
Added to this, earlier in the week to see the video of USAF air man Aaron Bushnell setting fire to himself outside the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C as he screamed “Free Palestine” until he collapsed and died. He showed courage and commitment that I cannot fathom and I simply cannot shake the image from my mind of him shouting those words even as the flames entered his throat and burned his tongue. It was an unbelievably harrowing reminder of what has been done to tens of thousands of children, all in our name, with weapons made in our countries.
The images of atrocity and barbarism that make it out of Gaza only remind us of what untold and undocumented horrors the people of Palestine have endured and will continue to endure because politicians in the West are complicit cowards in upholding American Empire. Israel being the American Empire’s most strategically important Imperial outpost.
We need to make sure that those who are complicit in these crimes are never allowed to forget it. All the politicians who lined up to defend this genocide must be crammed into the dustbin of history. Instead of your vote, give them your contempt. Let them be hounded for the rest of their lives by the horror that they have unleashed and sustained.
Never forgive. Never forget.
LANDLORDS UPDATE
Well it never rains but it pours, after announcing that my studio/the Museum of Neoliberalism will be demolished in October, a week or two later the landlord of my home told me that he’ll be kicking me and my flatmates out this summer to move his daughter in because she’s separating from her husband. I’ve lived there for 10 years, and I’ve been in the studio for 9 so to be fair I’ve been very lucky to have this much stability, but as my friend Amy said, “Mad how your entire lifestyle and security is dependent on the health of a strangers marriage.”
So that’s even less reason for me to stay in London! On the plus side I might have found somewhere not too far from London that would be a perfect studio AND expanded museum, but I’m waiting to find out if I can get a loan large enough to try and actually buy the place, and then turn it into a permanent Thatcher Museum, (a dream I’ve had since 2014!)
Spending everything I have (and plenty I don’t) on a Thatcher Museum / art studio might not be the soundest financial decision ever made, but I feel like its the right thing to do with the resources available and from the amount of people who have made the trip to Lewisham to visit the current (very small) museum, I feel like an expanded and enhanced Thatcher Museum would be a viable prospect. But there are a lot of hurdles between here and there. I’ll keep you updated anyway!
As for the Museum of Neoliberalism it looks like I’ll need to close it by the end of September to give me time to de-install and put it into storage. So if you haven’t seen it yet and would like to, book a free visit here! Now also open on Mondays!
IN IRELAND UNTIL START OF APRIL
And regarding that, the museum opening times are currently reduced until the 9th April as I’m currently in Ireland to visit my folks and attend a few family weddings. It’s my first holiday for a while, (and last for a while considering to the tsunami of admin and moving ahead) but orders are still being sent out twice a week thanks to my assistant Kieran, who is also an activist artist currently finishing his degree, give him a follow!
SORRY THERE’S NOT MORE ART IN THIS UPDATE – WILL HAVE SOME MORE IN THE NEXT ONE! 🙂
This update is public and shareable so please feel free to pass it on. If you’re not on my mailing list but would like to be you can sign up here.
Eternal thanks to anyone who’s ever backed my work on Patreon or through the shop!
And thanks for reading!
