I’ve decided to keep a blog on my site as a place to offload thoughts, research, and think out projects. The first few relate mainly to my diagnosis of ADHD which I received on 16/12/2020, and the implications of this for my practice both following the diagnosis, and historically.

**Why Streams**

I say in one of the blogs about ADHD and my practice that: “I’ve felt a struggle about whether ‘controlling’ my output was the same thing as a lack of authenticity, while at the same time feeling my authentic self was doing things incorrectly. There’s something fundamentally anti-artistic about this sort of top-down control.”

(“Controlling my output” would mean only allowing myself to create one stream of work, for example.)

I decided not long after my diagnosis to embrace the way my brain works, and just go with it’s flow instead of fighting against it. In the past I’ve been embarrassed or frustrated with my inability to ‘find a style’ or stick with a project without getting distracted by a new one. Displaying my work in ‘streams’ is the way I’m currently choosing to organise the different projects that I’m allowing myself to work on in tandem.

The streams are more important to me than the dates you see below the works. Because a lot of projects are happening at once it makes ‘progress’ on each project slow. So a painting might be planned in 2016 and actually painted in 2021. Because of this the time that’s passed between each painting in a stream is quite irrelevant to me in most cases.

**The blog**

On one other big historical battle in my practice, I said: “struggling with a lot of boundaries in terms of how much to discuss thoughts in relation to work”. I talked about going deep down rabbit holes and not really having a good understanding of social or art world rules surrounding how much to divulge and when to keep quiet.

For example, for an ADHD mind there’s literally no end to the associations you could make from the combination of two images: a worm and a gemstone. There’s no bottom to the multitude of rabbit holes of thoughts and research you can get into. Worms are: soft, nature, soil, decay, rejuvenation, gardens, death. These things can lead to research on: form and texture, climate change, allotments and local green spaces, death and decay in art history, death in contemporary society. And each of those thoughts can branch into new zones and take me ever-deeper, reading on forever for the rest of my life. There is no heirarchy; I'm interested in any of those things. And this is just one ‘stream’ of my work.

So when someone asks me, “what is this work about?”, or “what are your interests in your practice?”, I find this challenging to answer. There is rarely a single interest at play, nor a limit of associations.

The blog is a way to consolidate thoughts and research as a means of exploring questions such as these.

Blog Intro

3/12/2020
I’ve had suspicions for some time that I might have adhd. I’m talking to a doctor about testing next Friday. How I think it’s affected my practice:

- Consistency. It’s common (and usually expected) to be able to be recognised for your style of work in a painting career. While other artists in uni stuck to one style and discipline their whole degree, I would fit between extremely divergent subjects, mediums and concepts. I’ve felt like I have to control my consistency (never so far done this successfully). I’ve felt a struggle about whether ‘controlling’ my output was the same thing as a lack of authenticity, while at the same time feeling my authentic self was doing things incorrectly. There’s something fundamentally anti-artistic about this sort of top-down control.

- Overthinking, over-conceptualising, going down deep paths and ending up somewhere too esoteric , not understanding when something is too esoteric or not. Struggling with a lot of boundaries in terms of how much to discuss thoughts in relation to work.

- Hypersensitivity to criticism can apparently be a symptom. Instagram used to feel like a ‘safe space’ for me to share work and thoughts without much consideration. The more followers I get, the more exposed I feel, and the more I feel prone to self-censor. 

5/12/2020
I’m feeling very confident about getting an ADHD diagnosis after filling in the self assessment forms. Every hour I feel I’m having a new epiphany about a symptom or trait and how it relates to a present or historical incident. *This* is why I shared an IG story last month about having trouble calming down and focusing on a painting. I couldn’t paint as well as I wanted to.

I’ve decided to “go back” to the worm/gem watercolours and force myself to complete 26 of them based on the alphabet photos I took. This is an experiment in assigning myself a number of works to finish, to prevent me from straying off task.

It raises a lot of questions for me but I think it’s a necessary experiment. Can you place restrictions on your practice like this? Is it wrong to not allow for deviation? I used to think it would be wrong for me to do that. Now I think that my propensity for deviation is so extreme I only have 2 choices: set myself rules like the above, or plan all projects expecting that I will only produce 3 works even if I truly believe I’ll produce 100.

What happens to the work I don’t make? Very tempted to make an ‘ideas graveyard’ section of the website for all the plans that don’t get realised. I’m always allowed to resurrect stuff I suppose. The ideas graveyard could be a way for me to ritualise the abandonment of plans I really wanted to follow through on. It will give me a way to exercise the more-thoughts-than-I-have-time-to-fulfil problem. (I hope I can get actual tombstones for each one). In this way I can imagine each idea lives a happy life in ideas heaven, without feeling the constant nagging obligation to do it when I just don’t have time. I am allowed to dig up an old idea if I find I have time though (hopefully this can also be visualised with a dug-up grave).

11/12/20
My suspicions about ADHD came from reading at article (I can't find) about how it presents in adult women. When I first read this article I thought ‘ok, so I’m messy and forgetful. Big deal, that’s loads of people’. But it wasn’t until digging deeper into adhd traits that it dawned on me how deeply affected I am, every second of every day. I began to notice how frequently I lose my phone in a day, even when I have pockets. I noticed how much my mind wanders in a conversation and how I can sometimes struggle to stop it drifting. My partner’s told me how difficult it has been to manage certain traits, such as my being lost in thought when he’s talking right to me, and how he took this as me intentionally ignoring him, meanwhile I’m completely oblivious. THIS is why it would take me 5 hours to complete a 2 hour work day. THIS is why I have new nagging ‘inspiration’ for my practice every single time I read an article, watch a tv show, or look at a picture. Can I create an artists statement that gives me freedom without mentioning adhd? I want to be ‘an artist’, not ‘an adhd artist’. I don’t want to fall into a trap of framing myself that way.

I thought I was neurotypical and I thought my quirks and struggles were the same as everyone else’s. It explains a few strange looks I’ve remembered when talking about my experiences presuming they’re universal. I never wanted to imply that I was different, even when I suspected it, because that seemed presumptive or egotistical in some way. But having this label: ADHD, means everything makes sense for me now. I am different, but not; I fall nearly into a framework that does already exist. I am normal in this framework, and not a broken human being.

THIS is why I struggled in some subjects to the point of debilitation. THIS is why I would fail exams in a subject I loved. THIS is why I couldn’t make it to the end of an exam paper. It wasn’t because I “couldn’t read well enough”, as I’ve always guessed. In fact, my reading was fine, I just couldn’t read the words in order. I couldn’t contain myself from jumping lines ahead, then returning, and reading over and over again until nothing made sense. Blanking out under pressure. A persistent noise in the room might make everything fall apart. In a normal maths class my inability to focus became chronic; escalating every session until it became an obsessive tic where I knew as soon as I looked at the page my mind would go as blank as a piece of white paper. I’d read at 14 in the school library how Buddhists meditate to make their minds clear, and I thought I must have some kind of superpower. Watch how I do it so easily, here, I can think of *nothing* at the drop of a hat. I can make my mind empty of all thoughts. Especially in maths class when I open that book. Only there it’s out of my control.

6/1/2021
I'm back to painting for the first time after being diagnosed with predominantly Inattentive ADHD.

I'm realising how much “the adhd” actually impacts my painting. I frequently lay paint down with a mind that I’ll ‘correct the issues later’. This is probably in part a strategy to just lay something down while I’m in the zone, but possibly sometimes it’s beyond my control: a moment when my brain won’t fine-synch with my body and let me enact control, finesse… it’s quite hard to describe. It’s as if my brain and my hand are two different creatures. Let me re-caption this cartoon by Nick Seluk to illustrate the two creatures:

![Nick Seluk cartoon](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759914/nick_seluk_cartoon_7b9a72fae6_623d17e72c.png)

This battle is like being in a really long arm wrestle with someone who almost matches your strength. You have to creep toward your goal in millimetres, often being pulled back before trying to re-ground and re-focus yourself to push back again.

Living through this experience for the first time since the diagnosis is also the first time I’m feeling really beaten down by the situation. The feelings:

- Maybe painting isn’t for me.
- Maybe I should give up on this entirely
- Maybe I need an alternate form of expression that isn’t such a struggle

These thoughts are depressing because I can’t imagine a life without painting. Then there are more hopeful thoughts that follow:

- Maybe meds will help me make this work
- Maybe I can double down on this method and it will work fine with restructured rules
- Maybe there are other methods if that doesn’t work (this is actually a stressful thought, I don’t have other methods as it stands)

Note: persistence and time have made me able to paint fine today after all. The problem is managing (working out kind strategies for) that time it takes to settle in.

9/1/21
Wow this is why I’ve always frozen when giving artists talks, and needed a script, even during Pecha Kucha events. And radio or local magazine interviews. This is why I’ve wanted to say “I won’t ever do that again”.

The ADHD Diagnosis and thoughts on practice

Medication is different for everyone, this has been my experience so far on week 2.

Normally I’m walking around with 10 TV screens in my head, trying to watch them all at once. I didn’t know this until I started medication. They are multiple internal monologues, competing, running alongside each other and cutting each other off, occasionally silenced by a loud burst of whatever song is stuck in my head that day. The voices are all my tasks for the day and my fears of forgetting them or dropping a ball by not managing time in the most efficient way. They’re also my tasks for the week, future possibilities, and past events.

10-20 minutes into taking my pills (Concerta) the voices are gone. I had no idea how many I was carrying, and I had no idea how much stress they were causing me. I felt an anxiety that I didn’t even know I had, just gone.

I also felt like I’d had a lobotomy; my head was so quiet it was unnerving. I thought all the stuff I was carrying around was necessary to get me through the day, and now it’s gone. Not just the voices but the obsessive (now I see) coping mechanisms I’d built around them; how not to make mistakes when I’m reading or writing an email, or how not to be late. Making few mistakes has become a part of my identity. and I had worked so hard at it, had to work hard at it. And now I was going to make spelling errors like everyone else. Now I might be late.

My head felt vacant. But what had really happened is that everything I'd been carrying around had been put into boxes I could access at will. I was no longer watching 10 TVs, I have just one now, and a remote.

This remote is the key thing I’ve been lacking. Now I can work at any time at the drop of a hat. Now I can make a decision quickly without the other voices casting doubt, giving other options, and causing paralysis. Now, time itself has slowed to a manageable pace. I’m not getting nasty surprises when I look back at the clock; instead of skipping unpredictably from 15.05 to 15.45, it’s 15.15 just as I’d expected it to be.

Because of this, I can keep working at 15.05 because I’m not on edge that I have to start getting ready to collect my daughter from nursery at 17.30. I don’t feel time’s going to slip away from me. I don’t feel the incessant panic while I try to push through and keep working, setting timer after timer. Now I can stop for a minute and talk to my partner without the anxiety that I’m wasting time. I can make lunch and enjoy it.

I’m able to paint now at almost any time I choose because I can switch my channel to painting mode. When I take a little break I can get back on task quickly, and I’m saving so much time without my obsessive behaviour for re-checking emails and social media text before I send them. I don’t require a stimulating soundtrack or podcast in order to sit and paint, and struggle hard when I can’t find one. My hand is steadier, and it goes where I want it to go, it’s less impulsive.

This medication isn’t freely available on the NHS. Neither is an adult ADHD diagnosis. I’m now quite scared about the possibility of not being able to stay on medication.

Side note on earworms: I talked to my partner about this and I had no idea my earworm experience wasn’t normal. He said it’s like a background track that plays when you’re not thinking about much else. My pills hadn’t kicked in yet this morning and while I was thinking about writing this blog post my thoughts were cut off by the loudest rendition of a verse from Five Little Monkeys, the Mother Goose Club rendition. You basically have to wait for it to finish before your other thoughts can start again.

ADHD Meds & Painting (plus earworms)

I hadn’t wanted to take on “ADHD” as part of my personal or artistic identity. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it much and I certainly didn't want it in my bio or statement. I hoped (and still hope) that when the excitement of the newness of it dies down it’ll fade into the background, and become a side note rather than a front-stage piece of info for me.

My initial reluctance was in part a result of a strong awareness of the stigma, and a feeling that it could put me in a special box. As if there’s “Art” then there’s “Disabled Art”, and they don’t play on the same field. I think a lot of people do think this way, though ironically, I never have.

I knew it was absurd that I was thinking this of myself since so many of the artists I love have disabilities or impairments. From [Daniel Johnston](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu0RAMwH20k) and [Judith Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Scott_(artist)), to the artists like Jackie The Ripper and other creators at [The Gate](http://thegateartscentre.blogspot.com/p/about.html), an Arts Center in London.

Now I see it as being unavoidably integral to explaining my practice, and in fact it lifts a lot of the tensions I was feeling when comparing my practice and methodology to neurotypical artists.

So since, in reality, it sits unshiftingly at the root of myself and my practice, I’m allowing that to be reflected in the way I talk about my work publically by sticking it in my bio after all.

On adding ADHD to my bio after I said I didn’t want to

In January I took part in [Forced Collaboration](https://forcedcollaboration.org/), a project by Falmouth based artist Georgia Gendall.

"Forced Collaboration is an online platform that matches artist's practices anonymously and creates a space for cross-disciplinary collaborations through the process of making/following instructions to create artworks."

The instructions I gave went to [Bryony Hussey](https://bryonyhussey.com/):

![Instruction](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759914/instruction_de8be8a2e6_f665e8439e.jpg)

The instructions I received were from [Becky Warnock](https://www.bxwarnock.com/)

![Becky Warnock – Radical hospitality](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759918/becky_warnock_radical_hospitality_eb2ee302bf_a012c69ad7.jpg)

I think I was only mildly ill with Covid when I sent in my instructions. When I received my instructions I was extremely ill and bedridden. The only act of "hospitality" I could offer was to share my sickbed, and so I offered some space to one of the plants in my room; a cactus. For a couple of hours over a few days it got better light from the bed than it would have on its usual shelf. It shared some coffee and water with me which it wouldn't have done ordinarily, and I drew it while we just hung out.

![Radical hospitality – My drawing](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759914/radical_hospitality_my_drawing_64fa91039c_ff7d292e64.jpg)

The rest of my drawings can be seen [here](https://forcedcollaboration.org/Becky-Warnock-and-Thais-Lenkiewicz)

Forced Collaboration

Worms as an incantation.
Repetition is a spell (?)
Worm as foundation stone of ecosystem

Incantation to the worm, the foundation stone of the ecosystem.
To bring about connection to magic.

Magic only exists in nature.
Magic isn’t in nature, but rather in living things (?). We are magic things, but we can’t connect in the city which is outside of our natural habitat. Just like animals in the zoo can’t connect to the wild enough to survive.
Magic can be carried into the cities but it really comes from trees.

Incantation to the worms, the foundation stone of the ecosystem, to bring magic into the cities. Into the dead bricks.
Let the dead bricks remember that they were clay or stone once covered in algae or moss. Let the bricks of the houses remember they were once covered and absorbed by life and magic. Long before even people existed, and tamed them.

Can a brick become full of its nature-born magic again? If I put a thermalite block in the garden and let moss grow over it, does it remember? (In its sand from fossil beaches, and the ancient plant matter that formed the coal ash)

Is there, in fact, magic potential in the houses here? Which are covered in something from the sea air?
When the houses, particularly the newer builds, get covered in the green stuff from the sea air, do they start to remember their true nature? Does their render prevent them?

Does the render, made of stuff from the earth, remember it’s natural habitat when it gets covered in the green stuff, and after a long time, do they get haunted by magic memories like people say old buildings are?

Incantation to the worm, the foundation stone of the ecosystem, to open me up to the magic contained in the memories of the bricks and the render of the new build houses of the city.
Let me see the magic seeping into the high rise flats as the green stuff from the sea air begins to coat it and remind the render that it has magic still.

![Worms](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759911/worms_7afee52479_e322b6e7ab.jpg)
![Green stuff](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759899/green_stuff_6a7c4e1232_d64122c7a3.jpg)
![Seeping](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759898/seeping_9b31498a7c_fc61e160ab.jpg)
![Astro turf](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759909/astro_dcce58f4e5_e700ccadfd.jpg)
![Growing](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759896/growing_31a9e6e503_b15f49300a.jpg)
![Growing](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759895/growing2_d9cbe4e86a_a8a3c0fd83.jpg)



Worm thoughts (incantation)

I had to come off the ADHD meds (Concerta) and while I wait for a prescription of Elvanse (a different one) I’m experiencing the most manic-feeling day I’ve had for at least a month.

I felt like diarising a bit about what that’s been like.

If I were medicated I probably would have got on with the watercolours I’d planned. I would have knocked a bunch of them out and done the other stuff on my to do list.

I wasted a fair bit of time this morning with distractions while I got through some things I had to do (oops I missed ‘add upcoming events to calendar' - and by upcoming I mean this week so I hope I don’t miss anything).

I made a few of these for a bit of a play

![Laughtor Man](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759895/small_laughtor_man_155ee62320_57c146c3ac.png)

Then I went to watercolour but I had the thought to use a green pencil instead of regular graphite. I made a few.

![Worms](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1618759892/small_worms_b2350a86aa_401edcb8f5.jpg)

Then I wanted to try another oil on aluminium painting but then I felt concerned about my ability to paint that finely in oil without medication. Obviously I’ve done that my whole life, but since I felt a bit shaky (physically) today I made a snap decision about the next meds to try and emailed the nurse.

I didn’t like the look of the worm painting I’d planned before either so I opened photoshop to make a new one based on the whorls of my thumb. But when I opened photoshop I noticed an old image I’d made for a drawing and thought it would work well as a painting. So I printed it, but then on finding I had no small square aluminium panels I messaged the artist [Luke Roberts](https://www.lukerobertsart.com/) who I noticed uses them. He gave me some good leads right away and I bought something to try. (Jacksons - who I normally buy from have a nightmare system for the small panels.)

I thought about many ways in which I could run with pebbledashing standing stones.

- I could buy pebbeldash for dolls houses (I've seen it for sale once before) and use it on vintage photos of stones which I could set onto panels of cement.
- I could paint lifesize stones in landscape with pebbledash for the stones (landscape is painted)
- I went to the garden to see if there was anything I could pebbledash
- I looked at the front garden and imagined it with a pebbledashed stone circle
- I tried to think about how I could make a lifesize pebbledashed stone. What would I build it from? Chicken wire and modrock? Is that all too heavy for my studio? Would I regret making this? Would my partner be annoyed at my having made this? What is the burden of this object, on the balance, for the sake of a play.

I’ve thought about 2 zines that I’ve been wanting to make. I wondered if I should have some kind of crit for one. Partner suggested the zine about psychosis would be better not as a zine, but as a podcast or as a guest thing on someone elses podcast. He doesn’t like zines and thinks they’re a waste of time. Almost certainly true, but it’s that or nothing for me since that’s my means.

I liked the idea of making a blog post for an episode of a podcast that sounded just like a podcast, but probably only has the one episode. Or perhaps, who’s episodes are not tied together necessarily. Maybe there’ll be another episode one day, maybe not. It probably won’t be about the same subject. Will it have the same theme music?

I was wondering if these manic days are useful for shaking things up, now that I (hopefully) have the meds for proper functioning, is it ok to take holidays and see what happens? Or are these manic days completely useless. Are they full of dud ideas and wasted time. This blog may provide a reference for me to consider these questions when I’m medicated again or having a slower day.

In a whorl

List of things I knew about women when I was growing up:

- They’re not funny (none of them are good comedians)
- Not intelligent
- Can’t paint
- There are none in the history of painting (or in any history) because they’re not capable of doing things well
- They like shopping and so their main goal is money (a man’s money)
- They don’t want to have sex (they only pretend)
- They don’t orgasm (they only pretend)
- They don’t wank
- They're silly and naive
- They scream all the time (very fearful)
- They’re not strong so they can’t do a lot of things like lifting and most sports
- They don’t have stable friendships because they’re bitchy and they always lie
- They eventually want children and they will use tricks to get them
- They’re supposed to always let men get their way, or believe they have
- They only have lines on stage when pretending to be men (because men are interesting)
- Interesting female characters are written by men and aren’t real people
- Interesting women are freaks/anomalies
- Men make better women on stage and TV in drag

I looked at women like they were a different species. I was ashamed of them and didn’t want to be one. I thought there was something wrong with me, like I had some condition called ‘too much testosterone‘ and I wasn’t really fully female. I didn’t want to do the things they wanted to do. When I found out a new teacher was female I was disappointed because it meant they’re not as good. I felt short-changed by female leads in pantos because I didn’t have a real, interesting person (ie. a man) to root for, so I’d root for the baddie. When I wore fancy dress I was Robin Hood, and when I put on a crown I was a king, not a princess.

I didn’t feel comfortable saying that I was a woman until I was approaching my late 20’s and finally understood what feminism was. I'd made the concerted effort to read that history and really understand why, for example, there are few visible women artists. It was a slow journey, going from ‘he’, through ‘they’, to ‘she’ took me decades. It was never the case that I wasn’t born to be a woman; instead I had to learn what a woman actually was, because society had completely hidden her.

Taking my ‘narrative stream’ paintings (currently Stream 3 in Current Work) in a more autobiographical direction has had me thinking about the representations of women in media through childhood; newspapers, Blind date, Eurovision, and the late night films I was too young for. Women who were themselves (though not like me), women who were playing women who they thought they should be (like some of my friends were). The visible women who were examples of how I was expected to live.

Happy International Women’s day. Here's a little piece of text from an essay that answered every question I'd ever had about the missing women in the history of the arts and beyond:

"*...I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.*"

- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)

International Women's Day and painting

![DSC_0060.JPG](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1623849782/DSC_0060_296c401f1b.jpg)

![DSC_0020.JPG](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1623849782/DSC_0020_e0a5b73e89.jpg)

![DSC_0066.JPG](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1623849786/DSC_0066_d888ed5342.jpg)

![DSC_0070.JPG](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1623849786/DSC_0070_2c3e995eaa.jpg)

![DSC_0003.JPG](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1623849786/DSC_0003_d9decf4afa.jpg)

A tea leaf reading desk toy

Tasseography at the office

![DC818D25-1A87-4C31-A7D8-3F0038F9A163.jpeg](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1625671722/DC_818_D25_1_A87_4_C31_A7_D8_3_F0038_F9_A163_5b13eae504.jpg)

A short collection of anecdotes about encounters with celebrities’ dogs; from the banal to the frankly heroic (on the dog’s behalf). Some of these dogs are clutched tightly to their owners sides, some get loose, while some are many miles away from their owners who don’t know *what* their dogs get up to behind their backs.

It’s titled after the infamous celeb gossip email mag ‘Pop Bitch’, but of course mine is instead called ‘Pop Bitch’. The collection comes just from people in my immediate network and has stories about the dogs of people like Nick Cave, David Hockney, Buster Bloodvessel, and classic film star Vivien Leigh.

Created on Brushes Redux (the same app Hockney uses for his digital paintings), I print the zine on demand at home, and it includes a bonus page of cut-out bookmarks.

Message me on [insta](https://www.instagram.com/thais_lenkiewicz/) or email to grab one - £4 (£1 of which goes to Gables Cats and Dogs Home). Free postage within the UK.

Thank you to all the contributors: Vienna, Rachel, Ceri, David, Andrew, Karen, Dan, Kiwi, Ash, Anon, and Anon.

![62D5CE80-53EC-4AB6-96A8-95F0D145FA72.jpeg](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1625671722/62_D5_CE_80_53_EC_4_AB_6_96_A8_95_F0_D145_FA_72_390cd8d0e5.jpg)

![2b.jpeg](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1625671757/2b_ea63ac6553.jpg)

![joined_video_31c30127b87842c590443c2e9b93f43f.mp4](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/video/upload/v1625671809/joined_video_31c30127b87842c590443c2e9b93f43f_172bc34db2.mov)

Pop Bitch (Zine)

There’s an X by your name if they see you eat mackerel from the Sound or collect winkles at Cawsand. There’s a note about a man who collects mussels twice a year from the Lynher. If you use the seaweed to fertilise your allotment, which is close to the dockyard, and you eat the vegetables, then what? I don’t know by what point of a percentage point it increases your risk of cancer. I don’t know. I just know there’s an X if you live on the water, or over mud, or over mud and stone, and if you do water sports. And you don’t even have to swallow the water because it’s in the air. The report says the rates of leukaemia here aren’t high enough to worry about, but they’re higher than comparable cities. My science teacher told me to never so much as put my hand in the Tamar and a friend's doctor told them we actually have one of the highest child leukaemia rates in Europe, but I don’t know. That’s just hearsay isn't it. So maybe if you have all 34 X’s by your name; like you eat local honey and blackberries and forage mushrooms and you swim in the sound, maybe it doesn’t increase your chances of getting cancer by very much at all. Maybe a thousandth of a percent even, but I’m not clear at all. I don’t know at what point they get close to illegal levels. I guess that’s the main reason they make these surveys; to make sure. Even if they’re now going to release untreated water directly into the river, I don’t know by how much the exposure increases. But what if you were in the river when the hose burst and the 280ltrs of contaminated water leaked in, and they didn’t tell the council, like every time, or you went fishing? What then? I don’t know. I wish I knew a bit more.

All of this is true. The contents of the zine, maybe not so much.

![drawing 2.jpeg](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1628535250/drawing_2_f6bcf04df0.jpg)
![0cover2.jpg](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1628535251/0cover2_9b997b5673.jpg)
![0cover1.jpg](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1628535251/0cover1_aa49768630.jpg)
![Screenshot 2021-08-02 at 09.42.52.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1628535251/Screenshot_2021_08_02_at_09_42_52_5d783b7516.png)
![Screenshot 2021-07-30 at 13.27.52.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1628535254/Screenshot_2021_07_30_at_13_27_52_e8e2a77531.png)


I made this (mostly) fictional zine as a reflection on living near [Devonport Dockyard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMNB_Devonport) after reading about their [proposal](https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/devonport-dockyard-plan-pour-radioactive-5596385) to release further contaminants into the river Tamar. The base has faced a lot of criticism over its safety record, and here's an extract about current active nuclear risks from an article by [Scientists for Global Responsibility](https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/devonport-and-nuclear-submarines-what-are-risks):

"The fact that the most risky elements of the dismantling and servicing process were excluded from the risk assessments is of serious concern. But what is of even more concern is that these risks were excluded when there are eight aged nuclear reactors berthed in very close proximity to the population of Plymouth.  

The potential risks of an accident or incident are rather starkly set out in the Devonport Off-Site Emergency Plan (DOSEP). [10] This plan includes various contingencies such as: exclusion zones of 2 - 10km, the latter enclosing all of Plymouth (population 326,000); the issuing of potassium iodate tablets; keeping people indoors (including children in schools); closing of major roads and rail links; population evacuation; and farming restrictions up to 30km downwind. Thus while there is a major incident plan covering these very serious possibilities, the MoD public consultation documents deliberately avoid considering the activities most likely to cause them.

But the MoD did consider a much worse risk in a document that they presumably thought would escape public attention. In the declassified and heavily redacted minutes [11] of a Defence Board meeting in 2011, recently unearthed via a freedom of information request, the MoD’s senior nuclear safety regulator, Commodore Andrew McFarlane stated the following.

“All pressurised water reactors are potentially vulnerable to a structural failure in the primary circuit, causing a rapid depressurisation and boiling-off of most of the cooling water. This results in failure of the fuel cladding and a release of highly radioactive fission products outside the reactor core.

“While the further containment provided by the submarine’s pressure hull may contain the majority of this material inside the submarine, some leakage is likely to occur and, in any event, the radioactive ’shine’ from the submarine poses a significant riskto life to those in close proximity, and a public safety hazard out to 1.5km from the submarine. Current designs of UK and global civil nuclear power plants have systems for safety injections of coolant into the reactor pressure vessel head and passive core cooling systems. [sentence redacted] UK submarines compare poorly with these benchmarks. [2 page section redacted]”

In the event of such a failure happening in dock in Plymouth, the radioactive ‘shine’ would impact several areas of population. The obsolete submarines are in fact moored only 500m from the dockyard railway station, Morice Town Primary School and residential areas with 32,000 residents. [12][13] It is hard to imagine that this state of affairs has been the case since 2002, or to imagine why the siting of eight aged nuclear reactors in or near a centre of population has not received much higher criticism.

The risks due to the planned de-fuelling of eight aged nuclear reactors still berthed in submarines remain critical. This complex and difficult task is expected to take at least another 12 years. As a result, active nuclear risks will continue at Devonport and in close proximity to residents for many years to come"


To buy a copy for £3 +p&p drop me a message on here or [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/thais_lenkiewicz/)

Observations of Apparent Mutations on the Banks of the River Tamar

##### “A film has to compress a considerable amount of narrative into a small space” - Kim Jong Il, On The Art of Cinema

- *“Compose the plot correctly”: ask Liba what the plot should be (tell me a story)*
- *“Themes should be treated in such a way as to enhance their political importance”: for consideration*
- *“Each scene must be dramatic”: read this chapter so that it doesn’t conflict with next point*
- *“Begin on a small scale and end grandly”*
- *“The mood must be expressed well”*
- *“Which makes a work a masterpiece, its scale or its content?”*
- *"A film without music is incomplete. Music should be appropriate to the scene. A melody should be unique."*
-  *“Revolutionary creative practice requires a new system for guiding the creative process”: ignore this*
-  *“Before acting he should understand life”: failed*
-  *“The quality of acting lies in the director”: a lot of responsibility here*
-  *“The director should clearly define emotions”*
-  *“Best use should be made of music and sound”*
-  *“The secret of directing lies in editing”*
- *"All characters should be subordinate to the main character"*
- *Seed Theory. What “seeds” (ideologies) do Liba and I have in common? What common beliefs?*
- *"An artistic work which mirrors a noble and beautiful life truthfully and richly, gives the people great strength in their practical struggle to transform nature and society”  - I would like our relationship to nature to be transformed so I’ll study this advice.*

Watch the 1min film "Shell Pasta" [here](https://www.instagram.com/tv/ChdGgtEAuGL/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link)

### **Thoughts on using Kim Jong Il’s text as inspiration**


Liba picked up a bag of conchiglie pasta and said "we got this from the beach", and this novel piece of toddler insight became the premise of the film, which fell together nicely despite our occasional creative differences such as her initial resistance to getting the pasta wet. Liba always challenges me to slow down, which is against my nature but certainly a lesson I'm trying to adopt.

Before Liba came up with the concept for the film I felt like I needed a starting point, some sort of direction to kick off with. The instruction I’d given myself - ‘to collaborate with my toddler on making a film’ felt vast and ungrounded. She isn’t the kind of collaborator I've worked with before; being unable to input equally into what we were doing and being liable to refuse to work together at all. I envisioned going to a park with her to just film for hours and see what happened, but then I remembered I had this book.

Kim J is less known as a frustrated filmmaker who owned one of the largest private film collections in the world. He instructed the entire North Korean film industry to read On the Art of Cinema in the hopes that they would start winning international competitions, but it has been said to have had little influence on NK film making at all. This presumably has something to do with NK creators having to adhere to strict political ideologies at the risk of death which were at odds with the common and topical subjects the rest of the world’s cinema dealt with.

My interest in acquiring the book in the first place is related to an interest in out-there theories in general, the kinds of theories propagated often by individuals which may develop dedicated (yet small) followings. Ideas such as flat earth (which become less fun when it became less fringe), hollow earth, Mudfossil University, Bigfoot, and a multitude of 19th century scientific publications that saw theories like the examples below. Authors are usually self-taught and self-appointed experts in their area (as is Kim J in his publication). These are enormously time-consuming passion projects which are sometimes born out of a need to sustain a belief already held, as is particularly the case with Christian authors proposing scientific theories that battle to align contemporary observation and discovery with Biblical scripture. I wouldn't want to think that readers who hold such beliefs felt ridiculed or persecuted, I just have a personal interest in the place in all our minds where imagination and logic battle it out to bring us to new, private and personal theories or belief systems. Art could be said to fall into this category; don't artists build worlds and try to convert people into them?

Other favourite passion projects include:

**Terra Firma: The Earth Not a Planet, Proved from Scripture, Reason and Fact, by Scott David Wardlaw (1901)** - The original anti-globular Earth text. Doesn’t like geologists. Dinosaurs are probably theatrical imaginings from showmen, proof of stone age humans will never be found (“I am certain”), the South Pole doesn’t exist, and the moon does not reflect the sun’s light but emits its own electric light which putrefies food.

**Paradise Found, The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole. By William F Warren (1885)** - Argues that humans originated from the North Pole, largely citing the many ways in which the sight of the night sky at the pole presents us with a central focal point to the universe. It’s a myth that half the year is spent in darkness, and in fact that most of the year is daylight and therefore it is remembered by us as “the home of the sun”.

**The Earth's Annular System; or, The Waters Above the Firmament: Vail, Isaac N., (1912)** - “...to show that the Deluge of Noah, and all the “Ice Ages” were caused by the progressive and successive collapse of great world-canopies of aqueous vapor, which were the last remnants of a Saturn-like Ring System or a Jupiter-like “Cloud Ocean,”” More recently criticised as “not serious biblical scholarship.” by a creationist paper due to Vail’s belief in the existence of ‘millions of years’.

**Beginning and Way of Life (1919) by Charles Wentworth Littlefield** - Over prayer he could influence salts in the blood to crystallise into any form, even once summoning tiny living octopi. He believed this process to be the origin of life, and that one could improve humanity by engineering the quantity and quality of mineral salts in the blood. Heavy white supremacist content. He donated one hundred thousand copies of this book to something called The Rainbow Temple Association, as well as another invention: “as many Rainbow Lamps as are necessary for decorative, experimental, and healing purposes”. Whatever they are.

**Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries Into Commonly Presumed Truths by Sir Thomas Browne (1672)** - muses on accepted truths of the time, such as "That Storkes will onely live in Republicks and free States'' or “That Hares are both male and female”. Browne appears to reflect on some questions from a very personal vantage point, although the scientific method wasn’t exactly in its prime yet as we can see from the accepted fact that the plant basil “propagates Scorpions”, and you will even grow scorpions in your brain if you smell it too frequently. On the question “That Flies, Bees, &c. Do make that noise or humming sound by their mouth, or as many believe with their wings only”, he claims they will buzz without a head, buzz without wings (if moved through the air), and that “big and lively” ones will buzz without either.


The intrigue is in the dedication to a theory that the author isn’t academically qualified to proclaim themselves an expert in. No objective testing or “scientific method”, no second opinions, only a dogged belief in the correctness of their own opinion despite zero or little formal training in the area (again, relatable as an artist).

There is an interest in belief more generally, which perhaps has something to do with truth, and with storytelling. Humans are story-telling animals, “language is our gift” (as says Robin Wall Kimmerer) and for most of our history it was only spoken; always weaving magic alongside the wisdom that couldn’t be interfered with: the facts about our surroundings that kept us alive were entwined with and bolstered by fantasy. Come the age of late-20th century science in the west where imagination and speculation is outlawed, our intrinsic yearning for stories breaks loose. (As does the Dunning-Kruger effect in the sector of wealthy white males).

Science, as Robin Wall Kimmerer also says in Braiding Sweetgrass (the actual new bible), is a beautiful foundation stone and potential sacred text for the west in engaging with the world, but must be coupled with humility and heart. These two attributes can be felt to be lacking in texts such as the above, which feel more like self-righteous belief systems often rooted in narrow, bigoted and western-entrenched thought patterns. Traits that most contemporary artists like to think themselves as fighting against (so here is where some artists might differ from aspiring cult leaders).


Anyway, involving Liba’s father in Shell Pasta by instructing him to create the score was an unintentional but apt echo of the story of actor Choi Eun-hee and her ex husband and film director Shin Sang-ok being forced to work together on Kim J’s instruction. Except without the kidnap and the stakes of carrying the North Korean film industry on our backs. Lloyd Jones is a musician and his participation felt fitting for centering the film more around Liba.

Only on completing the edit and sending it to Lloyd to work on the score did I realise what a crucial part of the film the music is, how empty the visuals were without the grounding of the sound, and what a huge aspect of the film I had passed to someone else's hands. But I think it worked out nicely. I sent Lloyd the following choice advice from On The Art of Cinema: 

- The music for every scene should be exquisite, gentle and positive in tone
- Not too high pitched or dragged out for too long for no reason
- Songs should be beautiful, tender, gentle, and flow smoothly
- A melody should be unique
- Should be appropriate to the scenes
- Should possess profound meaning and powerful emotional content so that they will grip the people and imbue them with unflagging strength and courage
- Should not be too complicated,
And lastly this which I don’t want to summarise:
![Screenshot 2022-08-19 at 11.12.31.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/joneslloyd/image/upload/v1660903972/Screenshot_2022_08_19_at_11_12_31_aa373fbd1a.png)

Thaïs Lenkiewicz

Pop Bitch (Zine)