marishistoricalyappery

[marishistoricalyappery]

1926 General Strike, UK

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Cannot stop listening to this song

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Photographs from the 1926 General Strike.

This is a fascinating event in UK history! I’m going to list some interesting things about it: fear of communist revolution with significant trade unionism and its growing importance in workers’ organisation etc , the catalyst of the strike being miners staging a walk-out in protest of reduced pay and longer hours and the deterioration of the mining industry and the withdrawal of government support, industrial support for the strike from docs, railways, electricity and gas, iron, steel, etc with workers joining the strike following the TUC’s (Trade Union Congress) announcement of a national strike, volunteers carrying out the services of workers who were on strike (some of these volunteers included students from public universities), armoured vehicles and troops being deployed to ensure uninterrupted transport of food and so on. So much!!

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Rant about AI and History. You’re probably bored of AI fear-mongering and sensationalism, but I am just expressing my thoughts.

Artificially Generative Imagery (AGI) is utterly incompatible with history as a medium of understanding humanity, as an academic discipline, and as a record of human existence. It should not be tolerated in any sphere of History. It should not be relied upon to curate imagery for historical events, when it is our duty as human beings to memorialise and preserve the artefacts and evidence of human existence before us. Why should we resort to AGI to produce an image of what life was like in 1348 when we have hand-written documents, the legacy of paintings, of garments, records, so on? How can you insult the legacy of these people who recorded life in such a way as to resort to AGI? What is your motive? Are the records of human beings not good enough for you, not in keeping with your aesthetic preferences? Do you hate human beings so much that you would replace their tangible traces with a hollow digital rendition that presents a mere amalgam of information without understanding? As for artificially enhanced images and videos; I can see their usefulness, but I dislike it. I don’t have to like it, of course— but for me, what I love about photographs and film fragments is that this is a snapshot of a moment that definitely occurred in time. This fragment is a glance into history and the recognition and record of human beings that we will never meet or see or hear, and hopefully our curiosities are aroused with regard to their experiences. What must it have been like to be the child who stares at the camera, or the soldiers in the midst of cleaning their guns with the knowledge or their immortalisation taking place? What sensory experience did they have, and what happened after and before the photograph? This curiosity is what enables an anchor between us and that moment. To use AGI to answer these questions is to discard the significance of the original photograph, which was taken by human hands that sought to document or to immortalise. This AGI, nor those who use it, cannot experience. The moment that you use AGI to generate images that you classify as relevant to history is the moment that you have abandoned what it means to be a historian in the first place and, in my opinion, is the moment that you shed human connection. All that you say after that moment, all that you do and present, has little value for you have abandoned the foundations upon which your work lays. I certainly will doubt the veracity of your intentions.

I feel as though with the disgusting quantity of AGI bleeding into Historical fields, we are losing our grasp of history and human contact itself. However, if you genuinely care you’ll feel a fresh devotion to *tangible* history. It is important, now more than ever, to visit museums, to read books published before 2023, to preserve your familial artefacts, to observe the architecture of your cities and towns and recognise the traces of history in each cobble, to seek out history and to experience it.

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Black Army Calvary of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, the paramilitary force of the Free Territory of Ukraine or Makhnovshchina which was an attempt to establish an anarchist-communist society with protection of free soviets and libertarian communes.

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This poster was made by Mukhtar Dar, a Pakistani-born photographer, activist, painter, and filmmaker. Mr. Dar was a founding member of the Sheffield Asian youth Movement in the 1980s in England and later joined the Birmingham Asian Youth Movement. If you want to learn more about him, here’s a great article!

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Trying to find a radio play from 1957 about a miner’s life and all I can come upon is AI POVs of mining in Pennsylvania in the 1950s #minecraft #mine THAT IS NOT HOW TUNNEL SUPPORTS WORK. THAT IS NOT WHAT A COLLIERY HEAD LOOKSLIKE. STOP IT. Trying to find archival footage of UK mines in the 1920s POV YOU’RE A COAL MINER IN THE 19th CENTURY. OH YEAH? WHY AM I WEARING A HARDHAT? Those weren’t really issued until the 1930s and even then, many miners still wore soft-caps into the 1960s.

In fairness, I’ve found a wonderful abundance of archival footage of mines in Wales. Still haven’t found the radio play though.

[marishistoricalyappery]

I love these pictures!!

Donning toy police helmets was not uncommon during the strike. Picketers would graffiti them and customise them with witticisms and those iconic stickers, and it was almost a sort of identification both of their allegiances and of the fact that the policemen didn’t display their own forms of identification via their numbers. If you look at the epaulettes on the officers’ shoulders, you’ll notice an empty space where a three digit number should be!

The following excerpt is from In Loving Memory of Work: A Visual Record of The UK Miners’ Strike 1984-85 by Oldham and Loach. It is a fantastic book and documentation of the powerful stories and art of the Miners’ Strike!

‘As with any great piece of creative communication, there’s a multiplicity of factors at play offering numerous ways to engage with the message... Perhaps the most famous dressing up moment was captured by photographer Martin Jenkinson, showing a protesting miner pitted in a parodic toy helmet against a hoard of police officers as he sportingly ‘inspects’ the line. The contrast of one miner ‘dressed up’ is contrasted by an interesting ‘dress down’ on the police’s part who are clearly not wearing their identification numbers on their uniforms. This was commonly reported by observers and picketers across the country as a common occurrence and a serious matter as it makes it almost impossible to identify them in complaint…

It may seem on the surface of things that a simple toy policemen’s helmet is nothing more than a playful jest in difficult, tense times. The reality however is that it’s a creatively astute vessel, loaded with the experiences and realities that working people faced at the hands of the police who were supposed to be there to protect them.’

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Thinking about her…. (Soviet MOLNIJA desk clock)

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I’ve been sitting on this for some time. Made it during a flu-induced state of delirium.

[marishistoricalyappery]

Society has really been in decline since we stopped dancing for fun and as a means of social networking and connection.

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Badges from the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike!

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One of the things that captivates me about the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike is the quantity and quality of the alternative media that was produced. See, because the Miners were contending with the whole force of the Thatcher government at the time, with newspapers and police intimidation bludgeoning their activity and intentions, they sought to create their own means of representation. This took form in pamphlets, posters, placards, badges, ceramics, banners, many of which were made independently and in an amateurish way. This art does not typically denote the refinement of graphic design elements. Rather, the art is a spontaneous and immediate expression of statements, means of communication, that needed to be voiced because no other outlet would enable it and other outlets would misrepresent it.

This art was birthed out of necessity to communicate cause in a manner that was easily legible, accessible, and achieved any means possible. The art, in a way, is a form of guerrilla propaganda. There is a profound aspect of class war to the Strike that I don’t think is paid anywhere near enough of the recognition that it deserves, rather it’s sometimes swept under the rug. The strike was a response to a sustained effort to destroy society* in the definition of it being a collective of people who share experiences. The shared experience, so it became, that enabled this collective solidarity among the Miners and the Support Groups was that of oppression and a sustained effort to break them.

Strike Art championed resilience, conviction, and solidarity.

*This is referencing Margaret Thatcher’s notorious statement in which she claimed, ‘There is no such thing as society.’ While she claimed that it was taken out of context, the outcome of the policies that were carried out in her time and as part of her legacy certainly reflect the meaning that people took from the statement, especially the destructive intentions she had; one needs only to refer to the language used in media publications and by Thatcher herself, delegitimising and vilifying the strikers by infamously referring to them as ‘The Enemy Within’. This was no doubt to sew divisions between communities, to spur on feelings of uncertainty and fear, and to justify the brutality with which the Strikes were quashed, and with which strikers were treated. Why would anyone be troubled by the implementation of brutal policing to quash the enemy? This is why it was essential that the Strikers had their own voice. Art was the means to have a voice.

[marishistoricalyappery]

75% decrease in insect biomass within my lifetime and I'm supposed to care about cover letters

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I’m a simple creature; I see a wine cork with an intriguing pattern on it, I keep it.

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This is the only song that I can listen to today 🤩

[marishistoricalyappery]

it wild to me that there are people out there who aren't interested in history

like wdym you don't think about the fact that women would tell stories as they made butter in the same way we listen to podcasts today? wdym you don't think about that one Chinese poet who wrote about how much he loved his cats hundreds of years ago? wdym you don't think about the fact that we found a gravesite of a young child surrounded by flowers from THOUSANDS of years ago? wdym you don't think about how people wrote "i was here" into the walls in Pompeii? wdym you don't think about the little egyptian boy who drew little doodles at the top of his school works more then a thousand years ago?

wdym you don't think about the fact that people, no matter the place, time, social status, are fundamentally no different from you. that they loved the same as you, enjoyed the same things you did, dreamed about a better life the same way you did. that despite how seemingly detached you are from these people, in time, place, and culture, the things you do and the thing u are, are so undeniably human that it transcends time and space