Love, Dexter Fletcher
Prop Gallery
Ashfield
22 November – 3 December 2023
Prop Gallery
Ashfield
22 November – 3 December 2023
How do you make something from nothing? By figuring out what you have in common. Naturally, what we shared in common emanated from the world we lived in – pop music, television, supermarkets, magazines. What promise, what solace. Our icons could easily have been anyone else – exchange George Michael for Jarvis Cocker, Madonna for the Manics, Janet Jackson for the Mekons, the Spice Girls for Bikini Kill, Pet Shop Boys for the Smiths. Yes, definitely do that!
How do you figure out what you have in common? Perhaps you have to return to a moment before politics is understood as “politics”: to childhood, to playfulness, to curiosity and naive rage, and yes, to dreams. Billy Casper looks out the classroom window, his gaze and his imagination fixed upon a wild bird. In dreams, if nowhere else, our time is ours and no one takes it from us in the form of labour. If our time has to be sold for wages then we claim the right to seize our time – in our hearts, in our minds, in our daydreams …
And then what did we make from our attempt to figure out what we had in common? We made friends.
Friendship, the foundation of everything. Solidarity, mutual aid, free association – revolution. Don’t get us wrong, “friendship” is not some trick in an activist’s organising toolkit. We’re not trying to recruit you to our groupsicle. Friendship is not a means to an end. It is the end – it’s the point of everything. Doesn’t everyone in the world just want to be able to face another human being, a stranger, and find the thing they have in common? And as soon as they find it, turn it into a game, invite others to join them. It’s what we do. It’s what we are. It’s our species being. Oh, have you forgotten that’s all you ever wanted? Have you been shacked up so long at the Bad Faith Motel?
How do you figure out what you have in common? Perhaps you have to return to a moment before politics is understood as “politics”: to childhood, to playfulness, to curiosity and naive rage, and yes, to dreams. Billy Casper looks out the classroom window, his gaze and his imagination fixed upon a wild bird. In dreams, if nowhere else, our time is ours and no one takes it from us in the form of labour. If our time has to be sold for wages then we claim the right to seize our time – in our hearts, in our minds, in our daydreams …
And then what did we make from our attempt to figure out what we had in common? We made friends.
Friendship, the foundation of everything. Solidarity, mutual aid, free association – revolution. Don’t get us wrong, “friendship” is not some trick in an activist’s organising toolkit. We’re not trying to recruit you to our groupsicle. Friendship is not a means to an end. It is the end – it’s the point of everything. Doesn’t everyone in the world just want to be able to face another human being, a stranger, and find the thing they have in common? And as soon as they find it, turn it into a game, invite others to join them. It’s what we do. It’s what we are. It’s our species being. Oh, have you forgotten that’s all you ever wanted? Have you been shacked up so long at the Bad Faith Motel?
