EUROPEAN

European Euro trash I'm euro trash. I purvey No taste nor lead in any field I M homogenised white human, wrapped up like a dairy lea slice and placed in a soft shallow box. I am dead, inside, and blind and deaf and dumb and stupid and opinionated. I'm scared of blood and mud and shit and life and earth. My creativity is on etsy. I want to burn but I'm atheist now, but I don't burn bibles or qurans or mahabaratas I burn pellets in stoves preparing for Armageddon I'm off the grid in Wales or Sweden or Croatia, but not off enough to survive the flood of people that spill from the killing lands that feel so close now. Not off the grid. My superiority confuses me. Why am I so fat? Awash with centuries of propaganda I will put a positive spin on that. Big is better. Fat and sexy. Armed police with yellow guns now stroll through kings cross. Tiny frail men with army scars and small man complex wait to meet the enemy like Lego figures from the box flung into dung still smiling and at attention. Blood and limbs and viscera the wrongness and pain and disarray of war implied by Ak's and hand guns. Not yet, we hope, not now, we pray. There is so much to protect, we think, so much LIBERTY. Liberty, our eternity. Advertised now in every flash of twig-like thigh and rolling eyes head lolling back in angled pose perfect for all the culture trendsetting alternative underground magazines.
Cashmere block heel spike hair taffeta bow over idiosyncratic boots are they new or old models own can I ever be that thin do I understand the message does it make any sense. Leather plastic substance cut and meaning motive we are disconnect because our viscera betrays our mortality, we would like to pretend we will live forever in an airlock of small portions and speed. Pout, pout, let it all out, this is the tweed we can do without. Something like a all wood entrance hall that most of us will never have but imagine welcoming guests in. Plant the world of unattainable into my fish like brain and I will strive forever in discontent to never have it. 
Is it organic? No? Oh, Is it robbed of its natural goodness sitting in a GM poly tunnel farmed by Chinese and covered pesticides? Yes? Two for seven pounds? Okay. 
Let me just check Facebook. Someone is saving the whales. Good, I like that. Someone's killing them too! Shit, this an outrage! I'm fucking furio.....Chinese students have been massacred. That's normal right? Oh my god look at that baby hat. I'm sharing that.
Where is our land? Where can we graze our cows? Where can we grow our stinking vegetables? Where are our beehives? Where are our families? Where are our aunts and uncles and parents and cousins? Where are we and what the fuck are we doing? I'll look on Instagram...
White Cliffs of Dover snarl at Calais. Over the briny ocean where all our boys went so willingly to battle petrol stations line the road like welcoming parties of cheese toasties. All the way to Turkey. The killing was so close then. The dread killing. Killing killing killing. Some like killing, killing life killing animals killing soil killing hope killing innocence killing culture killing God killing truth killing kindness. Dark human cancers blighting the earth with spurious intent - human death cells infecting others until their armies are ravaging all life leaving dust bowls stained black with blood. 
What of life? Life, my wilting herb garden sitting gathering dust on a top floor window ledge. Soil dry like weetabix, my crops corrupted by sloth and no routine. 
The trees survive, I don't have to water them. The trees of Europe, great Oaks, sycamores, chestnuts, willow, fir, the trees endure. They dapple us in shade in parks and gardens for a moment we lie on astro turf like grass with the trains and drains humming beneath us we look up into a thousand nodding leaves, affirming that we are okay, that we are still alive, that we are merely one of them and that when our season comes we will fall and nourish the earth, take our place in the infinite cycle, we breathe, we are at peace.

The municipal baths on Long St. Cape Town.

THE MUNICIPAL BATHS on LONG STREET, CAPE TOWN

Sucked out my airtight hotel into the humming breeze of Cape Town Streets I see a cool, low, white facade and 'Baths' picked out in arts and crafts scroll. Cemented there so long ago I wonder if it still is. The white wood door is open and inside I find a tiny turnstile in painted iron and a twenty one rand (£1) entrance fee. I resolve, of course, to go back.
Returning with my swim suit hours later I hear a strange bird call from inside. I pay at the glass office,watching the uniformed man rubbing his head in the tiled, dim-lit atrium, illuminated by a sky-light. Venturing through the blind doorway, I discover the bird calls are coming from a small boy with big eyes. He stands with his hands behind him against the ancient tiles - recognising that he is in some kind of paradise he heralds me and this watery temple with an angelic chorus of bird screeches, he also stops me from wandering into the wrong changing rooms ; "No! No" he pauses his hymn ,his eyes widen, "That's the men's!"
Suited and towelled I move timidly into the pool room. Church like the transparent corrugated panels run the length of the roof, the original simple metal frames swoop across reminding me of all the halls and gyms I have ever known. Yellow diffused light floods in and a wall of frosted glass at the far end is framed by shelves on which stand a beleaguered collection of pot plants that need watering. A doorway in the centre is open to the Suns furnace, the pure hot orange pigment of heat clashing wildly with the teal hue inside. I poke my head out and see a concrete heat trap - a boy lying on a wooden bench in the sun, a father chasing his toddler and a woman lying down, lost in a reverie which is evidently hotting up - a bent leg sways gently as she grins and bites her finger on one hand replying rapidly with the other to the texts that ping like feverish kisses from her lover.
Turning back, I take in the scene, a woman breastfeeding her tiny baby, the life guard in yellow scans the pool for heavy petting and small children splash in the shallow pee-wee pool. Aptly named I have always thought.
A twenty year old mural runs the length and height of the brick wall on my left and on my right a bank of stepped seating that sit beneath a separate sloped loggia of fine pillars. A silhouette of a Victorian man and woman in evening dress illustrates the sign which reads spectators only. No-one is swimming lengths as I ease myself into the tepid, refreshing water, at the deep end boys race widths in pairs, I begin a snail pace breaststroke, treading water as tiny arms flail in a splashing crawl race in front of me, euphoric calls of victory as one touches first. I pause further, are they coming back?No? I paddle on.
Turning back my attention is drawn to the mural. A reflection of the pool in its higher state. Ecclesiastical windows shine divine light onto a yellow blue ocean and the heavenly congregation sit and stand wearing woollen hats and jackets, swimming trunks and head scarfs on its tiled banks. It is this place as a de-segregated utopia of tolerance and peace, and while large sections peel away leaving patches to match the municipal pall of the other walls I cannot take my eyes from it. Suddenly all the boys decide to race, churning the water with flailing legs and arms an electric current surges through me, my soul soars as I snail crawl on. Slower still, an old man sits in quiet meditation in the spectator stands, enjoying the view.

ART & ARTISTS RACE & GENDER

MY DIVERSE TV SPEECH

So 'Diversity in the media' - a catch-all term for the presence or lack thereof of black male people, black female people, white female people, ability impaired people in our media. Lots of labels. Too many labels for me - I simply see art and artists, not what you are, but who you are.
What I want to try and do is explain my perception of this issue in context.
I want to talk about what makes good art and bad art - the effect it has on our cultural out-put.
I want to talk about the impact of our shared history on the present.
I want to talk about conformity and it's damaging effects and then I want to talk about some of my experiences.

The difference between good and bad art is the extent to which the creator strives for a truthful expression of their perception of experience.
When someone makes good art, makes us laugh, makes us cry, we are connected to ourselves and humanity, we are engaged, entertained, we are grateful.

But, unfortunately, there is a lot of bad art, be it stodgy television, repetitive, derivative films or boring mindless music.

Bad art is the product of conforming minds seeking gainful employment in the arts and entertainment industry. It comes from people who have a passion for success but no passion for real creative expression.
Conforming minds are created by the mindless consumption of bad art and the belief that people in general are not really discerning enough to desire anything else, let alone demand it.

This leads to a nation whose cultural muscles are weakened by a flabby narrow mainstream, in which we all drift mindlessly, atrophying into a semi-conscious brainwashed state.

The question is; Who determines the political racial gender dynamics in this flabby mainstream? Who helms the reinvention and regurgitation of our experiences for our nations viewing pleasure? 

Well, not enough 'good artists' and too many conforming, unworldly minds.
The key to improving our cultural landscape is in the collaboration between artists and producers who seek to explore the truth of human experience and to push the boundaries of our art forms. In this pursuit, race, gender and ability status are irrelevant. Nature does not bestow talent, intellect, passion, creativity on people based on race, gender or lack of disability, nature gifts the muse and the fire to souls who have something to say. The good artists who seek transcendent connection with others through themselves.

Right now however there are too many souls that society isn't listening to, souls that need to be heard, that deserve to be heard.

Why?

Well, that's why we're here right? So why are we here?

History pretty much tells us all we need to know, our social, geographic political history that has brought us to this point, this place, this era.

I'm pretty sure everyone in this room knows that we are living in a world that has systematically disenfranchised the majority in order to protect and serve the few.

While racism served as an advertisement for slavery, sexism served as justification for the control and enslavement of women.

The tools with which the advantaged maintained the status quo have not changed that much. So powerful and prevalent was the propaganda of oppression that it has seeped into our collective consciousness like the disease of greed.

Century after century as the world industrialised and the profit margin became mans obsession, men, women and children were systematically and legally robbed of their human rights, freedoms and dignities to make a sociopathic minority rich and then told repeatedly in pamphlets, books, posters, essays, vile insipid tomes...and now mainstream television and film that they categorically, biologically deserve no better.

That's where we find ourselves today.

The racism, sexism and classism that is very often at the heart of bad art is what perpetuates the mindless conformity which strangles our culture and suffocates change and innovation in societies collective consciousness.

Conformity is the enemy of change.

Or, to quote the American Ralph Ellison, author of 'The invisible man' ;
"Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway? Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many part sand you will have no tyrant states. Why if they follow this conformity business, they'll end up forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a colour but a lack of one. Must I strive towards colourlessness? But seriously and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain."

It's only when we take responsibility for identifying and shaking off the mental shackles of our social conditioning that forms us into fearful conformists who have accepted the propaganda of oppression which serves to suppress change, extinguish innovation and deny those souls who burn to create a chance to infiltrate and inspire the mainstream, its only when we do this that we can claim to be changing the world for the better.

Years ago, I urged a director to go through a cast-list of a show we were making so we could establish which parts were racially non-specific, so we could consider black actors. He looked at me with anxiety and fear and said. 'Its a can of worms,' and in that moment I realised that the difference between he and I was vast, that my experiences, gender, up-bringing and environment had led me to explore and address the nature of my disadvantage and the disadvantage of others. His had not. He was scared to get it wrong, to open the can of worms in his own head that seemed to represent the part of his brain that was primed and conditioned to believe unquestioningly the rhetoric that reinforced his choice to reflect the world through the prism of his privilege and the wilful denial of the control and limitations that that privilege put on his ability to create truth, to create good art.

So I suppose I am here today to ask commissioners, producers, directors and creators to fearlessly mine your souls, to dig into your own can of worms, because I'm telling you, theres gold there.