"Empowerment does not mean giving power to someone.
Empowerment cannot be given. We gain power through building our skills, our confidence, our knowledge and our networks, and because we have earned it, it cannot be taken away from us"
Gobard & Matarrasso, 2021, p. 8. in Documents of Socially Engaged Art
"Sullo had told me that certain projects help you feel clean, and I know now what he meant. It’s the cleanse that comes with a connection to the stuff and the things closest to us, of having some understanding of how to take something apart and put it back together. What I’ve come to know, as my boss Mary and I have moved from job to job, is the way some semblance of control over the physical world around us grounds us, makes us more alert and more open to what’s in front of our faces every day. And in that lies the recognition of time and its impact; we see it in the chipping paint on the windowsill, the rust on the door hinge, the droop of an unwatered plant."
‘Reconciliation’, 1970, by Maki Haku (巻白, 1924-2000), a Japanese printmaking artist of the second half of the 20th century; he was born in Aso-machi in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1924, as Maejima Tadaaki.
He called ChatGPT an exercise in “replication as travesty”.
“Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite,” he wrote. “It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self.
“This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.”
"she sits away: wakes only to whispers
I tell myself through wooden frames
and small gaps between passers-by
just to kiss her shadow:
legless, i would stumble and crawl
what i’d give to be given a chance at ourselves
certainty against uncertains
my stare carrying from the place where she sits
to another life where sunrise remains
what i’d blind myself to, just to inspect
her endless form, her fractal hair
and her laugh like red diamonds
tumbling out her neck
to twirl and shimmer in the frosty air
people are most my own behind barriers
wooden frames and sweet words
I wish they weren’t"
"I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness"
"As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the solid land runs the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through the earth’s atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men, and sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and effect, when between the two no connecting link can be traced."
And I know these sounds aren’t always useful,
they confuse all my friends in the South,
but I’m scared of how dull this world would become
if each one of us used the same mouth.
No, let’s cherish these home grown devices,
the quirks in the way that we speak.
Cos we’re all part of one muckle planet at heart,
but our differences make us unique.
