Discord-ian

so much regret and all i held onto was hope

it's gone

ARTIST TAXI DRIVER @chunkymark 

Musings from my blog: http://wp.me/p42pSs-ow

Aletheia is a Greek word variously translated as "unclosedness", "unconcealedness", "disclosure" or "truth".

The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident" and it also implies "sincerity", as well as "factuality" or "reality".

In the early to mid 20th-century, Martin Heidegger brought renewed attention to the concept of aletheia, by relating it to the notion of disclosure, or the way in which things appear as entities in the world. While he initially referred to aletheia as "truth", (specifically a form of which that is pre-Socratic in origin), Heidegger eventually corrected this interpretation, writing:

To raise the question of aletheia, of disclosure as such, is not the same as raising the question of truth. For this reason, it was inadequate and misleading to call aletheia, in the sense of opening, truth."

Heidegger gave an etymological analysis of aletheia, and drew out an understanding of the term as 'unconcealedness' ( - nothing hidden?).

Heidegger focused on the elucidation of how an ontological "world" is disclosed, or opened up, in which things are made intelligible for human beings in the first place, as part of a holistically structured background of meaning.

Heidegger also wrote that "Aletheia, disclosure thought of as the opening of presence, is not yet truth. Is aletheia then less than truth? Or is it more because it first grants truth as adequatio (the way things really are) and certitudo (the essence of a thing), because there can be no presence and presenting outside of the realm of the opening?"

  A painting that reveals (alethe) a whole world. Heidegger mentions this particular work of Van Gogh's, Shoes, 1888, in "The Origin of the Work of Art".

WELCOME TO BRITAIN, THE NEW LAND OF IMPUNITY

No matter the criticisms made or damage done, fat cats and politicians seem able to cling on. Often their efforts are rewarded

What do you have to do to fall out of favour with this government? Last month, the security company G4S was quietly rehabilitated. It had been banned in August 2013 from bidding for government contracts after charging the state for tagging 3,000 phantom criminals. Those who had died before it started monitoring them presented a particularly low escape risk. G4S was obliged to pay £109m back to the government.Eight months later, and before an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office has concluded, back it bounces seeking more government business. Never mind that it almost scuppered the Olympics; never mind Jimmy Mubenga, an asylum seeker who died in 2010 after being “restrained” by G4S guards, or Gareth Myatt, a 15-year-old who died while being held down at a secure training centre in 2004; never mind the scandals at Oakwood, a giant prison it runs. G4S, described by MPs as one of a handful of “privately owned public monopolies”, is crucial to the government’s attempts to outsource almost everything. So it cannot be allowed to fail.

Was it ever banned at all? Six days after the moratorium was lifted, G4S won a contract to run HMRC services. A fortnight later it was chosen as one of the companies that will run the government’s Help to Work scheme. How did it win these contracts if in the preceding months it wasn’t allowed to bid?

In Brazil in the late 1980s, the country was widely described as o pais da impunidade – the land of impunity. What this meant was that there were no political consequences. Politicians, officials and contractors could be exposed for the most flagrant corruption, but they remained in post.

The worst that happened was early retirement with a fat pension and the proceeds of their villainy safely stashed offshore. It is beginning to look a bit like that here. This is not to suggest that the people or companies I name in this article are crooked or corrupt; it is to suggest that the political class no longer seems to care about failure.

Welsh artist, David Garner - They Shoot Children Don't They pt2, 2004

feeling let down

and torn to bits

nothing is clear to me

all i feel is I can't rely upon, trust, or feel safe

not feeling sorry for myself, just a realisation

that i exist in isolation

I need to look for some way to move on

The artwork "The System Sucks The Life From Me {Graduate Premium Myth}" is made from a found object I rescued from the skips of a Cardiff reprographics company which produced marketing pop ups for university's recruiting campaigns and Welsh government departments, now defunct or re-branded and is my response to the many cuts and proposed cuts to education, services, budgets and so on brought about by the UK government’s austerity policies and my anxieties over the commodification of education.

On the issue of Student debt - People are easier to control, easier to manipulate when they are in debt.

On the myth of “the Graduate Premium” – which is reducing year on year, as tuition fees are going up and up.

A young graduate couple with joint debts upwards of £60,000 are not going to cause any employer any problems regardless of their diminishing employment rights and vicious tactics such as zero-hours contracts.

Recently (10/4/14) a report by the Huffington Post entitled “Students Will Still Be Paying Back Tuition Fee Loans In Their 50s, Study Warns” – covered the release of a report by the Sutton Trust.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/10/students-will-paying-back-tuition-fee-loans-50s_n_5123387.html)

The Sutton Trust, which commissioned the research, said the findings showed that the new fee system could leave professionals such as teachers in a position where they have to find cash to cover loan repayments at a time when their family and living costs, such as mortgage payments, are at a peak.

Under major reforms of university finances, tuition fees were raised to a maximum of £9,000 a year in 2012, almost treble the previous fee which stood at around £3,000.

…higher education was meant to be about broadening ones knowledge, reading lots, meeting new people, and getting excited about ideas. However, it turned out that higher education is actually just about making yourself "more employable“ even, as happened to me, you are a returning mature student with long term health issues that made you unemployable a decade ago.

It's about fashioning yourself into a walking CV to compete for a stagnant pool of graduate jobs that are paid less in real terms every year, and taking on a rotten amount of debt in the process.

This week news quietly broke that the extra money a degree is supposed to earn you over the course of a lifetime – the “graduate premium” – is going down year on year, even as tuition fees are going up. Today’s students are paying nine times what was paid in 2007 and, according to one government adviser, up to 40% of the class of 2012 may default on their student loans.

Government policies are already having an effect on the way in which we experience and live our lives.

Whilst the implications of: 

the bedroom tax and

the growing necessity of food banks for daily living

has received a great deal of attention, there has been perhaps less focus on the continual chipping away of the cultural landscape that informs us and enriches us.

educational course closures,

huge student debts due to course fees,

overcrowding and reduction in quality of the student experience,

library closures,

gallery closures,

massive cuts and de-prioritising of the Arts in education,

curtailing of community and recreational facilities.

– our country is suffering from a form of ‘cultural vandalism’ which affects us all.