Joya: AiR / Fionnuala Kavanagh / UK
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Fionnuala Kavanagh / UK
“I always feel totally inspired and fully myself when I am at Joya: AiR. This was my third visit. When I first came as a volunteer in 2017, I had never been to an artist residency before and did not consider myself a writer. Now two books and a load of residencies later, it felt great to return to the place it all started. The full immersion in nature, epicness of the stars, and the warmth of Donna and Simon, invite you to open up, form really beautiful bonds with a small group of strangers, and to take a step towards yourself.
My work is about social issues, and pretty knarly ones at that. It was very beneficial to my practice to exit society for a bit and reach a place of calm where I could properly think.
I had the chance to share my new essay collection, CTRL ALT RIGHT DELETE, which looks at why young people are being radicalised by the far right. Here’s part of the reading I gave to the very supportive group of artists:
“I used to understand the world through simple heroes' narratives. Red Goodies vs. Blue Baddies. The Goodies boycott brands. Donate. Recycle. The Baddies, well, the Baddies love capitalism and hate immigrants and women. The Goodies and Baddies don’t really mix. Maybe once a year at a Christmas dinner table. State schools. At the polling station. In the line at Lidl. But mainly they remain separate, one group existing for the other only in their mind, their antithesis, formed for the purpose of strengthening their own sense of identity, their personal narrative.
(...)
Dating the hero of the Goodies, who waved his big red flag in one hand whilst dropping his litter on the living room floor for me to pick up with the other, parallel to my brother turning far darker than even a Tory Blue Baddie, mixed up everything I knew into a deeply bruised purple.
(…)
On the face of it, the Goodies and Baddies’ content differs – one group fashions their warrior mask from Guardian and New Yorker clippings and the other from 4Chan threads, but structurally, they are quite the same. When you find yourself in close relationships with both Goodies and Baddies, you see that on both sides, under those simple hero stories, there are complex emotional truths that can’t be easily summed up into shiny little soundbites, or by knuckle tattoos. Just like ‘HATE’, ‘LOVE’ too knows how to deliver a punch.”
Fionnuala Kavanagh