You can keep your fuel prices your false wars and your phoney leaders ....oh yes and fuck off!!!

Discussing 'Occupy' with Joan Baez .....

with her resent appearance at Plymouth Pavillions i was fortunate enough to get Joan's thoughts on the current occupations. " Its great that young people are again trying to open up a forum for discussion in this country. and we should all show our support;"

 For more info I recommend that you pop down to the new unobtrusive camp situated on Plymouth hoe and talk with these very intelligent less than tolerant youngsters from all walks of life.

The Valerio Institute of Alternative Learning

                                       

So When I approached the local government about taking on a large commercial space, this particular near derelict was one of the few that were offered , they couldn't believe their luck when I said ...yes I will take it !!!

a 20 mile walk to my little gallery distribution point down on the coast , and only a 10 mile walk to my parents, and only a 5 mile walk to Plymouth city centre with the means to be able to access the transport network to the rest of the country and further a field, but most importantly it was right on the edge of Dartmoor National Park !! so for me ...it was a perfect blank canvas to be able to set up a little arty hub

so we dicided to commit to it ... having handed over a great big envelope full of cash , that was immediately snatched from view by the local council , I took it upon myself to make a few adjustments,and make it ready for its intended purpose ...

so in between the logistics of moving an reasonable proportion of personal effects, building walls and working on the continually developing portfolio of art and design concepts, I even managed to maintain a few little outside commitments,projects,collaborations and exhibitions ....

after you design the thing, build the thing ....you have to paint the thing decorate it , curate it , promote it, and in order to maintain public appeal .....consistently diversify the thing ( from the previous gallery experiences I managed extensive experience of the latter )

the project was initially opened as a means of field testing the design paradigms for my own eco architectural masterpiece ' The Green Star House ' the optimum spatial allocation for human habitation !

but through circuitous circumstance I was able to take on some collaborative palaeontology projects with some local and national institutions, museums and education faculties

some of our ' bohemian ' style after hours parties / gatherings and shenanigans were certainly worthy of a few photos at the time ..... but alas as with so many of the ongoing tumults ... I am normally far to busy doing the thing .... to be standing around documenting the thing ! as we all should be really !!

and I should really give thanks at this stage for all those wonderful part time helpers / volunteers / hippies / friends/ beatniks/ collaborators and acquaintances that sometimes manage to catch me on camera during a quiet moment ....otherwise there really would be no record of me or my activities on this horrible soulless digitized life sucking machinery that you all seem to put so much clout and faith into ( what an age to be alive ) It still makes me smile when I approach a ' new gallery ' and introduce myself ....and the point of contact says ' who are you ' .... and these days I can quite happily say ' the fact that you don't know says more about your awareness ...or lack thereof , than my muted self effacing and still state censored activities '

these are I think the last photos I had taken of the space and this was just prior to hosting a week long arts and design festival.....unfortunately pretty much as soon as I finished the complete instillation , we started having some problems with the local authority. of course this was when the ' Coalition ' Government had begun to take effect and the whole of the countries admistration seemed to turn into a pit of completely self serving backstabbing , yet hugely inept and possibly retarded snakes  

it took a great deal of effort to complete the project and I have written a little more about this ordeal in my recent book ( available through stockists of original Artby Valerio )  but suffice to say that the final design was a magnificent piece of artistic display / interactive sculpture experience / Design creation and implementation and indeed political and social hub, and that is before any of the self engineered and tested eco and offgrid initiatives that I was able to finalise ( which was a running and functioning prototype of the now much discussed 'earthship' style project )... of course that was before such things were becoming common knowledge ...I do still reference the entire project with a huge sense of pride as not only was the entire enterprise self realized and funded .... but the epic legal battle it took to just maintain any sense of trade under the draconian and absurd actions of our local authority at the time

fortunately in spite of all advise to the contrary , the demented scale of authoritarian intimidations and a few little personal hiccups ( temperamental females and chinchilla mortality ) not only was the project completed ...the arts festival held ! but the self representing legal defence against these sinister clowns was colossal and certainly an experience and a fight worth having!, these days when I get the chance to actually reflect on this stuff, it is of course a little bitter sweet .... what might have been of the Valerio Institute had it not been for these hideous failures and corruptions of a completely farcical local and central government ... could have been something even more remarkable than it was. if I could have just been allowed to get on with the work peaceably  I could still be using Plymouth as a little base of operations, and in turn Plymouth would have had one less empty and near derelict building ..... but of course there is the hindsight knowledge that had I taken the judges bait ... had I agreed to continue as a tenant for these people ... then I am sure that given the state of decay in every facet of our so called contemporary governance ... then I certainly would have been unable to commit to some of the occurrences that have happened in the wake of this situation .... and without a doubt and just a little smile I can be sure there are no regrets x

Just a little bit of history repeated!

just as a brief note of comparison, I believe that i recall a story from the old testament in which a king Herod ordered the death of thousands of babies, and im left wondering whether or not as we have today just such a decree in the justified persecutions of the innocent, whether any of those soldiers under orders ever say to themselves .......'Hang on a minute' ......'This just dosnt seem reasonable' .

 Or im afraid the terrifying truth of the mob natured mentality as i see it , is that no probably not in fact id say that we are inclined rather to reach a frenzied point of disorientation in which case, soldiers or upholders of unjust laws begin to resign themselves to a distanced perspective allocating blame to some minority and actually taking relish  in the disproportionate measures endorsed, like the witch hunts for example or the anti Semitic policies of a well remembered former political party, when you start burning people or even suspecting people of needing to be burned  because they are too similar to something you dont like then its maybe time to take a little restock .

 as we lumber forward in this hap hazard fashion expanding our populations laying shameful waste to our resources and rendering huge measures of the space we need as uninhabitable, the liklihood that our neighbours and neighbours friends property boundaries squeeze up to each other, we will begin to notice more and more quirks and oddities that these people portray and we will condone and tolerate less and less.

 sounds pretty bleak i know ....and to some extent it is. This our world and our choice just how long we continue to perpetuate this lunacy is up too all of us. so yes it is bleak that we have allowed ourselves to degrade to this level, but it is also full of potential for tomorrow  may be the day that we prevent our silent obedience from keeping our actions in check.

" and how would you classify the nature of your business?"

Better equipped than most Museums,
More inspirational than most galleries,
More productive than most colleges,
Better food and drink than most restaurants,
With all the comforts of a luxury home,
And the music of a Greenwich Village coffee shop,

 For a Real view of Real art in progress.

The Valerio Institute of Alternative Learning
Summer long Open Studios 31st March 2012- 31st August 2012
advanced booking advised to avoid disappointment!!!

Spaced Out

How much room does a man need to stretch his legs?

Im sure there are volumes of facts figures and statistics put together from human observations made from all manner of perspectives, in terms of optimum daylight roaming terrain and available resources, of human interactions for optimum social developments, blah blah blah but in real terms what does all of that mean, as the design of our habitat and infrastructure continues to decimate huge swathes of oxygen producing green spaces where humanity used to go to escape the horrors of the systems they create for themselves to find a calm quiet inspiration when it is needed.
  how much longer can this be maintained, as our population here in this country approaches 70 million and you try to divide that up evenly across the million square miles or so ( as a generous measure ) that the brittish isles comprises, what does that leave you with ....ahhh but its still not such a bad figure , thats loads of room! what about roads the spaces taken up with car parks and carpet rights railway track and telecommunication towers. The inevitable failure of this infrastructure will simply give rise to another there will always be as there always has been human compassion and ingenuity and a desire to improve the means and lifestyle of the majority through the exchange of both of these things.
 Many people have been fooled in recent history by some very gifted liars and thieves into believing that they needed to buy the land they had a natural birth right too, so said liars and thieves could make their handsome commissions on these huge sums of money. And now what are we left with companies like taylor wimpy producing ' award winning ' rabbit hutches of 500 sq feet of modern living space for those who think a lifestyle can be maintained in such a tiny space.
 what a bargain youll feel youve got as the city centre apartment you overpaid for begins to look like dell boys tower block and the trendy little hub of housing you over look is decimated by the over populating public that try to live in such confined conditions spill out over each other......surely these are the early plan works for our own slums. but keep paying your council tax and im sure eventually youll end up with someone worth following!