SUNDAY 5 NOV
‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot;
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.’
Guy Fawkes night. Funny how we celebrate the Gunpowder Plot of 1604 - an attempted explosion of parliament. Officially, traditionally, it’s actually a celebration of the plots failure - a plot involving a small group of Catholics wanting to assassinate Protestant King James during the opening of Parliament. The context was decades of suppression and persecution of the Catholic faith and the night became an officially imposed anti Catholic commemorative date. A state decreed red letter day and warning. Guy Fawkes was hung but his face lives on in multiple –David Lloyds famous mask design for ‘V for Vendetta’ adopted by popular protest and activist movements from Occupy to the hackers of Anonymous.
As a child we used my Mum’s tights and Dad’s old cloths to create a misshapen golem of sorts, popped it into the wheelbarrow and went around the streets of the estate asking for a ‘penny for the guy’ to buy the fireworks to then destroy the ‘guy’ in the flames of a communal bonfire. I asked Dan if he’d done the same and he just looked incredulous. I re-enacted it with George recently wheeling a stuffed figure into school as homework and have a feeling it wasn’t considered appropriate. But the burning of effigies is alive and well in Lewes, East Sussex – a wild event evolving from a series of riots. No more ‘burn a radical catholic’ but burn the symbols of hate. Flaming crosses are added into the mix (marking the burning of 17 local protestants during Mary I’s rein) and seven bonfire societies produce a yearly effigy. This year these included Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman with tradition stating they burn an effigy of a traitor. Braverman attempts to pass new laws enabling the charge of extremism to be directed at anyone ‘undermining’ government when government policy that condones and allows genocide and climate destruction whilst imposing inhumane immigration laws and economic hardship deserves and desperately needs to be undermined. Accusations of treason abound in these times - labelling actions and people as ‘anti patriotic’ for highlighting the treachery at the heart of government. Do we ‘owe’ allegiance to undemocratically elected officials who, as declared public servants, do not serve or act on behalf of the people? The real treason is instigated by a roll call of those proroguing parliament and propagating hate and division.
Anatomy of a scandal. Autopsy of democracy. The very architecture of the Houses of Parliament embody a lack of transparency and accountability. Projections cross the Thames to light up its façade – ‘Ceasefire Now’, ‘Stop the War on Children.’ Police patrol the commoners congregating outside on Parliament Square. We have trodden this tarmac multiple times, intimidated by police horses, one minute exhilarated by the rallying cry of ‘people’ ‘power’ the next despairing.
The children’s primary school announces ‘A visit to Parliament’ and this is the one school trip I jump at the chance of being a parent volunteer on. Touring the House of Lords and Commons, corralling children through a building where those familiar with the lauded corridors of Eton and Oxbridge feel most comfortable. I muse how such sites of power and privilege seem to shimmer with apparitions of their future ruin, times merging in visions of flood and fire…snapping back to the present to do a head count and follow our guide, acknowledging for a moment the seductive quality of worn leather and curving wood - the corrupting allure of power and influence.
In 2017 artist Cornelia Parker became official ‘Election Artist.’ Apparently since 2001 The Speaker’s Advisory Committee for Works of Arts have appointed an official election artist for each general election with the condition of being an impartial witness to events with ‘considerable care taken to ensure political neutrality’(Dean Russell, Chairman of the Works of Art committee) - absurd and impossible criteria in exploring and exposing questions of democracy and power. The main work Parker produced was a film called ‘Left Right and Centre’ in which a drone flies into the deserted chamber of the House of Commons towards stacks of broadsheets and tabloids. The wind from the rotating blades begin to flutter and waft the papers and we see them blown open from headlines to ‘in other news’- strewn wide over the empty green leather benches. The sound of the drone in the eerie quiet is ominous - cut with aerial shots of these throwaway histories and statements. This is not a tracking crane shot, it is drone as active participant, catalyst and character in the work. I’m not known for my attention span watching films in art galleries but I stood transfixed in the Tate Britain (2022). Watching. Thinking. Of surveillance and control. Of the corrosion of democracy and the skewed power of the media infiltrating and influencing these chambers of power. Behind the scenes press briefing. Private, privileged access. Poisonous press barons destroying trust and governing public opinion.
As the drone hovers, I think of artist Derek Jarman’s reference to the old English epic poem Beowulf in relation to his film ‘The Last of England’ (1987) “Think of the mead hall in Beowulf, with the swallow flying through … Think of that mead hall full of the junk of our history, of memory and so on; there’s a hurricane blowing outside, I open the doors and the hurricane blows through; everything is blown around, it’s a cleansing, the whole film is a cleansing.”
A slight breeze ruffles the leaves that turn on the street. Our pumpkins have already moulded on the window sill and I retrieve the candles through fine grey fronds on collapsing vegetable matter. I light them anyway. A surreal ‘substitute order’ from an online shopping delivery replaced macaroni with Jewish memorial candles. The wax coupled with these thoughts on media and power is burning and I ‘m reminded of Jeremy Deller’s work ‘Father and Son’ (2021)– life size wax figures of media tycoons Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan. The work was installed in a deconsecrated church in Melbourne (Murdoch’s birthplace) with an ‘invitation to a public vigil’. To come and bear witness to these melting moguls as memento mori. Testimony to the impermanence of power and the mess it leaves behind as all that is solid melts into air and the gap between governments and the people they are meant to serve grows wider.
· Israeli citizens protest outside Netanyahu’s residence. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/protesters-outside-israeli-pm-netanyahus-house-anger-grows-2023-11-04/
· Holocaust survivors daily vigil protest at the Whitehouse https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1720783604261716020
· Elderly Jewish people arrested in London and Germany for calling out genocide.
· The French Senate propose an ‘anti-Semitic’ law that would punish critics of Israel and Zionism with imprisonment and heavy fines.
Exhausted, I blow out the candles and think not of saints, traitors or martyrs but of life violently extinguished.
