It is almost my bedtime. I have a very busy day tomorrow in real life. I am rushing to finish this ahead of 23:23 on 30 June 2024, at which point GANTOB (the person) will need to disappear into the shadows, never to be seen again. There may well be typos here. If so, I will correct them before I print pamphlets for the contributors here, and before I complete the book. The latter feels a long way off, because my Muons pamphlets (including a deep excavation of the remaining Curt Finks papers), The Benefaktor’s explorations of muted postal horns, and other submissions that have been given a “late pass”, are yet to be finished (or in some cases even started). There are going to be long nights ahead if we are going to complete the third and final GANTOB book before 23 August 2024 (please note the revised publication date).
Let’s forget all of that for now though. Today is a celebration. It is the culmination of 11 months of Kollektive and Kreative Tyranny, producing a body of work of which we should all be proud. There have been some lovely messages received today. I have tried to collect them all together. If I have missed something out, please let me know and I will rectify it for the book.
If you have been part of GANTOB, or if you have come to it late, hopefully there will be something of interest here. The book will tie up many of the loose ends in these 52 Pamphlets. Meanwhile, as Alex Chilton of Big Star once wrote and sang: Thank you, friends/ Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you/ I’m so grateful for all the things you helped me do/ All the ladies and gentlemen/ Who made this all so probable/ Thank you, friends.
GANTOB 23:23 on 30 JUNE 2024
As the day draws to an end and the final deadline approaches at 23:23, I am reflecting on the past year of GANTOB and what a delight it has been to work with the projekt. I have one final piece to write about the love and kinship that was experienced throughout. It’s been the best fun and distraction from the mundane, with only the odd display of unruliness.
I have enjoyed every single task that was thrown at me, one curve ball after the other until eventually I was acting so out of character that I learnt to enjoy writing. I’m astounded and will be eternally grateful for that change.
I love all the GANTOB family, we’ve done amazing work this year, kollectively. Kreative Tyranny and Kultural Vandalism abounds.
CHRISTINE 30 JUNE 2024
Following Caroline’s recent full house of answers to the 23 Questions it was lovely to receive another complete set of answers from Andrew and Nyla who, like Caroline, were among the very first GANTOBers in August 2023. Thanks too for Nyla’s wonderful pencil drawings. In answer to your question Nyla, you were definitely the inspiration for Little Grapefruit, which led to some amazing adventures imagined by some of the people who have contributed to this pamphlet. As to whether you are actually Little Grapefruit, the only thing I can say is that we are all GANTOB, but there is only one Little Grapefruit, and perhaps that is indeed you.
Question 1 – Is work important for the soul? (Andrew)
Work is very important for the soul.
Work per a quick google search can be defined as “a task or tasks to be undertaken”. Those drivers can mean lots of different things to lots of different people.
Having money to be able to live life with a degree of comfort is important to most of us and hopefully, with some good fortune, that can be achieved.
Personally, the connections I have made have been the most rewarding for my soul and have led me to explore many paths that I might not have otherwise explored otherwise (a chance discussion at work introduced me into a whole new spectrum of music for example, as well as making me realise I was not alone with some of the challenges that I face in my day-to-day life). It has also provided me with an opportunity to guide and aid people through the challenges of their own life and hopefully leave behind a much wider legacy.
One could view answering this question as work. My need to explain to who I am and what I am about is a task I often need to undertake, question and undertake again.
Question 2 – What fuels your passion for blogging so?
Sadly I am not fueled by blogging, though I do love the blogs of others. I will stop and drop all I am doing to devour a new Penkiln Burn thread for example, my brain then shooting and darting in lots of different directions after its eager consumption…
Question 3 – What is the male ego?
Male ego can be seen as the need to constantly impress and out-do other males, be seen to be impressive to females and be seen to be the best at whatever they do….unchecked and unchallenged it can be a horrible thing as can be seen in our current climate.
However, I am a male and I am not driven in that way…I am very much driven but I don’t feel the need to climb on others to show off to theirs who I am. So do I not then have a male ego? Is there such a thing as a male ego at all?
Personally I think the real challenge is entitlement (and latterly the slow death of empathy – that is a whole topic in its itself). This is not always people, from experience, who are wealthy or successful. Often they are people whose egos have been unchecked and/or pampered to be made to believe they have earned the right to act in certain ways…
The reason the term male ego is used is that somehow the world has been structured/indoctrinated into a way that fosters some crazy understandings about sex, race, religious superiorities. I am using my male sense of worth, or ego, to push against those doors.
Question 4 – What is rhythm? (Nyla)
Rhythm is the beat. Everything in the world has a rhythm to it.
Question 5 – Is it mathematics? (Andrew)
Yes 😊and it interlocks with rhythm to drive our world. Rhythm should have mathematics as its counterpoint or check but sadly mathematics in our current society is suppressing our rhythm…let’s get back to finding a tune and dancing!
Question 6. Is all that glitters gold? (Nyla)
No.
Question 7. When was the skull? (Andrew)
When was it not?
Question 8. Do sparling still return to the River Cree, Galloway, each spring?
One can only hope so. Roots are important.
Question 9. What are the two sides of the same coin?
My children are two sides of the same coin.
For one society’s norms are easy and followed unflinchingly. For the other all needs to be questioned, queried, challenged and then rewired into a different circuitry.
This provides a lot of challenge but also some wonderful conversation and some questions to which I now ask. You are never too old to learn that things don’t need to be just so.
Question 10. What is Addiktion?
The short and simple answer is something that you need but don’t necessarily want to need or are happy that you need…
Question 11. What is the question?
The question and the nature of it must always be challenged. The best question always means different things to different people and provides a multitude of different answers that then leads to at least a further question. Once the question stops then so does our knowledge and ability to grow and develop.
Question 12. When is enough? (Nyla)
Enough is when I am done. Then pudding.
Question 13. What is the Root of Forty? (Andrew)
The root of forty is man’s expectation of death.
That forty’s equivalent is now sixty or sixty five is a sign of human advancement and how much life has changed.
Further questions follow that, as of course they should.
Question 14. Is modern art just bits I could knock up in my shed or does it have deeper meaning?
No sheds are required for modern art. Meaning is strictly personal to the person placing it.
Question 15. What is melodic?
What is and is not melodic is down to the individual.
When melodic becomes dull and uninteresting is something the music press exists to debate and attempt to convince others.
I would suggest using Alex Chilton’s “Like Flies On Sherbet” as your barometer and see how your interpretation does (or does not) evolve over time.
Question 16. Does anybody have the sheet music (or the musical notation) for The KLF’s (or even Acid Brass’s) What Time Is Love?
No but why would one need it. Let it transport you without question or challenge. It exists and does not need to be relearned. Life should have a rhythm to it and sometimes it is best not to question the why. If bothered then invent your own tune.
Question 17. Have pamphlets ever changed the world, and how would we know?
Actions always change the world. Pamphlets are an action. When actions reach many then they have the power to make bigger changes.
Question 18. When is addiction?
Addiction is when you don’t expect it and is not known until it has happened.
Question 19. Is it ever time for the Teletubbies?
Yes and like addiction it may be too late for you to know when.
Question 20. Where is your green door?
In Marlow.
On loan to Shakin’ Stevens to allow him to find the necessary inspiration to continue honing his craft.
Question 21. So what?
Is a very good question and one that should be repeatedly use with those people that act with a large degree of entitlement.
Question 22. GANTOBBING: How was it for you?
Wonderful when life allowed me to indulge. Like a fine wine something that will grow even better in the memory with age.
Hope it was the same for you.
Question 23. What is effort?
What it takes to drag oneself through the harder times or alternatively complete responses to 22 questions 😊
ANDREW and NYLA 30 JUNE 2024
On 20 June 2024, via the Penkiln Burn mailing list, Bill Drummond emailed 40 recipients (allegedly) “A STUFFED ENVELOPE”.
Later on 20 June 2024, a Young Man emailed Bill Drummond, nominating the Tenzing Scott Brown Play “330 & COAT”.
On 24 June 2024, Bill Drummond emailed the Young Man to acknowledge the submission.
On 30 June 2024, the Young Man emailed a “Pencil Sketch” of “330 & COAT” to GANTOB (attached).
This was based on a photo taken by the Young Man in Great Yarmouth some years ago.
Among other things, this marked the Young Man’s last ever contribution to the GANTOBverse.
There is no further information.
Thank you GANTOB!
The End.
THE YOUNG MAN ON FACEBOOK 30 JUNE 2024
Today was my office day. they have posh tea bags in work: Pukka tea bags. A lovely berry night time blend and JOY ….there’s none to be had in there like .
Any way – do you remember that time we visited Little Grapefruit’s gaff? Yeah the lonely tiger lilies and the Chinooks &Amber Rudd kicking off?
This little drawing (I never use pencils you know so I did have to sit by the window and wait for inspiration) is the other one from my garden. This one is a bog standard lily. They smell so gorgeous
I heard little grapefruit planted them outside her opulent abode because of their exotic beauty and their heady, beautiful strong smell (enough to mask death in the old days)
It’s been the best random journey, konnecting with some amazing people and sharing ideas. I have loved every minute.
GAYNOR 27-30 JUNE 2024
We interrupt this pamphlet with a message from our funder – The Benefaktor.
Today is my niece’s birthday. She is an artist. I have given her a copy of the following book:
Art Without Frontiers: The story of the British Council, visual arts, and a changing world, Annebella Pollen (2024).
I was inspired to do this after reading Annebella’s pamphlet for GANTOB.
I had time to read a short section of the book before I wrapped it up and gave it to her. It was about Richard Long, the artist who initially inspired Bill Drummond, but whose work in Iceland ultimately tormented Bill Drummond and resulted in his “how to be an artist” period at the start of the millennium. * See also Bronwyn’s pamphlet The Long Journey.
I was tickled, after all the mentions of the number 40 in Bill Drummond’s work, and of course various re-enactments in GANTOB’s work, to see mention of Gerald Forty, then director of Fine Arts at the British Council, in Annebella’s section on Long. That is no doubt an example of apophenia, but I like to think that Bill Drummond was aware of this konnektion when he set out on his own Long journey.
Annebella writes that one of the main characteristics in English contemporary arts of the 1970 was “an extension of a national tradition of landscape studies, although its contemporary manifestation was tempered by a mode that was sober, careful, and even austere”, which sounds like something that would appeal to son-of-the-manse Drummond. This category included the landscape work of Richard Long though, as Annebella points out, even in the 1970s he was distancing himself from a “national tradition”, having also produced art in Australia, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, the United States and, most importantly for our purposes, Iceland.
Annebella goes on to write: “Long’s land art combines formal elements of minimalism with a meticulous engagement with the rural, marking and shaping sites through walking or other interventions… The works are processes as well as products, sometimes involving intense physical labour, extended travel and feats of endurance. The results include textual accounts, photographic documents, and three-dimensional structures…”
You can see why Richard Long would have appealed to Bill Drummond, with parallels including the 25 (text) paintings, the people’s pyramid, and the 17 hours standing on the Mathew Street manhole cover in Liverpool. And it has clear echoes in the work around the K-Line, memorably and heroically completed recently by Stu Huggett.
The following piece by newly inducted GANTOBer Stephen Dorphin, another walker of part of the K-Line, captures effort well. Though Stu is not mentioned in his words, Stephen has contributed a rather excellent portrait of the K-Line walker.
THE BENEFAKTOR 30 JUNE 2024
NO 23 – WHAT IS EFFORT? (by STEPHEN DORPHIN)
Ever since discovering GANTOB and the expanding network of collaborators/ contributors to the GANTOB universe, I have thought about the beauty of anonymity. How liberating it must be, to create, without fear of repercussions or criticism. The ability to don a mask and take on another’s characteristics must be exciting and revitalising. I do not have that luxury. I must tread carefully, to not offend the dear readers. I don’t wish to be deliberately antagonistic or offensive – please don’t think that of me.
Effort – noun, 1 hard mental or physical work, or something that requires it, 2 an act of trying hard, 3 the result of an attempt; an achievement, says Chambers Concise Dictionary 2004. I can’t disagree with that. Or can I?
Sat here on my L-shaped sofa in my living room, overlooking the canal outside my window, and occasionally spotting trees waving in the breeze, whilst listening to a Wolfgang Voigt (aka Gas*) album on my turntable, simultaneously typing these words into my MacBook – is this effort? Chambers Concise Dictionary would likely disagree, but I believe it is effort. I may not be writing with a Pentel pen in a Black and Red notebook, with the ever-present fear of tarnishing my legacy, focussing on the formation of each letter and the construction of each word. But I believe it is effort. It may also not be “hard mental” work, but I am concentrating, trying to choose every word carefully, trying not to be repetitive, nor verbose nor boring. I believe it is effort.
One life-long concern I have is that of being misunderstood – both in the written form spoken word and action. Where has this anxiety come from? I do not know, maybe that’s something for consideration another time. This is partly something I think about when I write. I read and re-read my words – but are they, my words? I never invented them; I only borrow them and therefore should probably not put claim to them. Nevertheless, they become my words since I choose what to do with them. I could write grapefruit ancient grapefruit justified grapefruit and whilst it may not make the most sense, I am fairly confident that I have through effort, created a string of words which no-one else in the whole world, living or dead has ever put together before. That to my mind is an achievement.
*The Gas album was Rausch.
STEPHEN DORPHIN 29 JUNE 2024
And with that, we end the GANTOB project. I will hand over these 52 Pamphlets to The Deputy General Manager of GANTOB (the project), as well as access to the email and social media accounts to mop up any responses and late submissions.
Don’t worry DGMoG(tp) – The Benefaktor and I will file our final versions of any outstanding documents and drawings by the previously agreed date. Good luck editing, restructuring, proofreading, printing and distributing the final book. I look forward to seeing what you do with it. Over and out.
GILLIAN, THE KROFT, 30 JUNE 2024 AT 23:23
GANTOB blog 
One response to “52/52 KOLLEKTIVE KREATIVITY – AN INTERIM EVALUATION REPORT (by VARIOUS ARTISTS)”
Congratulations. It was a great ride and I’m pleased to have played a part. Good luck.
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