Aaron Galway PhotographyWIDER PROJECT & FURTHER EXTENDED RESEARCH AND REFLECTIONS TO RESEARCH.
Updated: Jun 14
Entry: 1
STAND UP X - PROTEST MOVEMENT.
Stand Up X came to my attention when i first started walking around Whitehall around June 2020, just after the BLM protest in Whitehall.
I came across this group from being handed a flyer in regards to them, and a massive march and rally were being planned. At this time of the pandemic stand up x have little to zero public awareness and less than 1 per cent of media coverage from the MsM at the time.
Research into this group was crucial for me to keep up to date with future rallies around the capital, as the movement got bigger, so did the turnouts.
Currently, in 2021 the movement has upgraded the public attention to MsM via the support of the former labour leader Piers Corbyn with also many other known faces such as David Icke.
PUBLIC MISSION STATEMENT FROM STAND UP X:
StandUpX Mission
WE DO NOT CONSENT We do not consent to the illegal and disproportionate COVID-19 measures.
NO NEW NORMAL We are living in a state of authoritarian control. There is no opposition in government. Police are unleashing violence on peaceful protestors. This describes a Police Dictatorship. We do not consent to Government social distancing measures destroying public and private life. We do not accept enforced masks. We do not accept a dictatorship of lockdowns, ruthless demolition of small businesses, criminalising peaceful citizens & police brutality.
NO COVID JAB Forced, coerced and mandated injections violate the Nuremberg Code which states the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential in any human experiment. The trials are rushed and not capable of determining long term impact or comprehensive demographic analysis. This is a medical experiment of epic proportions, which proposes to alter the human body's natural genetic behaviour. Nobody knows what impact this will have long or short term or how many will be injured or die as a result of this. The Pharma companies will NOT BE LIABLE for any injury, death or unacceptable impact caused. If this kills and damages huge numbers of people, the corporations walk away with no consequences and a huge profit. Further to this, the UK govt is preparing for a large number of adverse results. Do we seriously want to alter our genetic behaviour, without knowing what could go wrong, to prevent flu symptoms?
NO SURVEILLANCE TRACKING Tracking & Tracing is a total violation of personal privacy and freedom to associate. It is a digital Gestapo. To add to this oppression, the government is proposing a Health Passport, which is designed to track your health records, purchases and public activities including travel. It will not be temporary. It is the preliminary step to 24/7 tracking. ID2020 is an implantable digital chip being developed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, proposed for all 7 billion humans to have, in collaboration with Gavi, the Gates Foundation Vaccine Alliance.
TAKE DOWN 5G 5G is necessary for the infrastructure of 24/7 Surveillance Tracking. This is why our roads are currently being dug up to install the fibre cable network necessary for 5G. This is why trees, which block 5G signals (and help us breathe) are being chopped all over our cities. 5G is lethal to privacy as well as to health. We have no reason to believe 5G is safe. More than 500 studies have found harmful biological or health effects from exposure to low levels of Radio Frequency Radiation proposed for 5G networks.
Reflection:
This research was and still is a major key player in keeping updated on the current affairs around protests within 2021 in London and the UK and from this research, I can keep up to date with new and emerging rallies from stand up x, a forever growing name.
With this research and knowledge, I can attend and be one step ahead of the mainstream and the public gaze.
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Entry: 2
https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/main/Home
The Socialist Party are one of the main sources used for finding out what demos are on.
This source works with nearly all protests within a non-right wing nature.
Free Palestine and Anti Lockdown to Save our children, to Save The Children.
Also, an anti paedophile movement has been seen to get support from this particular party within the UK.
Reflection:
Having researched further into the socialist's party, made me discover more information about more rallies and the history of the party.
This links with entry 1 of my wider research.
This research also gave me access to be able to see and hear and record Piers Corbyn when he appears at rallies and speaks.
He doesn't usually stand on a stage, he usually is in an area where police are not guarding and uses a megaphone to get his message out to the forming public.
Without this research, I would most miss a definite chance to see piers talking.
However, I did learn a press pass I required if being arrested is not what I expect.
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Entry: 3
About Guy Debord. He was born in Paris in 1931. Debord's father, Martial, was a pharmacist who died when Debord was young.
This is a major link for my work, as I believe I am becoming an activist for truth and to speak of reality, but I have grown up without a father, just like Guy.
This inspired more to read the book:
The spectacle and politics
A number of political theorists have argued that liberal democracy has been overtaken by the spectacle. Douglas Kellner (2003, 2016) argues that politics has become obsessed with spectacular imagery, as evidenced by the rise of Donald Trump in the United States (2016). The same has been applied to politicians such as Hillary Clinton, who is regarded to have operated under neoliberal feminism in order to advance the capitalist paradigm. Before Trump, Ronald Reagan can be seen as the first example of this theory in American politics. Similarly, Tauel Harper argues that our social formations and political practices are constructed and sustained by the logics of spectacle and render us as homo spectacular or 'beings of the spectacle'
Reflection:
This book makes sense to the work that I have engaged in recently, and also made me understand the mass spectacle that is politics and today's world as not just a mass spectacle, but more aimed at specific people.
We live in a world of spectacle, from our own looks to perfectionism, to politics, to media, to mainly everything.
When we grow up without a father figure, it's hard, and the result can be that those of use with father figure upbringing, can make themselves into a spectacle for others to see.
But this becomes more apparent when becoming more adult in life and thus making you/myself to whom/we all are today.
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Entry: 4
A COCK AND BULL STORY
Plot:
The film depicts Steve Coogan playing himself as an arrogant actor with low self-esteem and complicated love life. Coogan is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby and believes his role to be of equal importance to Coogan's, calling himself the "co-lead".
The film incorporates several sequences from Tristram Shandy. Not all of these are part of the film-within-the-film. The latter are limited to the story of Tristram's conception, birth and christening; Uncle Toby's experiences at the Battle of Namur and Tristram's sudden and accidental circumcision at the age of three. Uncle Toby's wooing of Widow Wadman (Gillian Anderson) takes place in a sequence dreamed by Steve Coogan and after the cast and crew have viewed the "completed" film ending, with Walter Shandy fainting at the sight of his wife giving birth, the question "How does the book end?" is followed by the concluding scene of the novel, in which Yorick says "It is a story about a Cock and a Bull – and the best of its kind that ever I heard!" Yorick is not in the film-within-the-film; in this scene, he is played by Stephen Fry, who appears elsewhere in the film as Patrick, a caricatured version of the actual curator at Shandy Hall.
Quote from the movie:
Steve Coogan: I think that's the attraction. "Tristram Shandy" was a post-modern classic written before there was any modernism to post about. So it was way ahead of its time and, in fact, for those who haven't heard of it, it was actually listed as number eight on the Observer's top 100 books of all time.
Reflection:
I enjoyed watching this, A 2005 British comedy film directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is a film-within-a-film, featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making of a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th-century metafictional novel Tristram Shandy.
Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles. Since the book is about a man attempting but failing to write his autobiography, the film takes the form of being about failing to make the film.
I believe like I have been told, ahead of my time, like a DR who, whom comes to the future to take on the now for the great of good and humanity, and all my weapons are just cameras!!
Researching to find this movie fits nicely into my current movements within photography.
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Entry: 5
Research into Abrahamic within Religion
decided to engage in this research topic to understand why there is so much hatred towards religion, no matter the following, and this is potently obvious in today's society and within political protest movements.
From the first project for my final, I attempted to engage more into the protest world and engage and involved myself more with people of far-right agendas that always seem to use religion as a base to engage with others for the many issues caused at a protest or other news and political events.
My research into this subject led me to read the Torah and the Quaran to understand more what's going on, and why is religion such a weapon for protests and news and politics alike.
my question to find isn't why is religion causing these issues, it a case of, what is religion from the views of other religions and then compare.
I then found that the word ABRAHAMIC includes all the regions we have like one, meaning GOD isn't anyone we know or see, its a case of submission to beliefs, and I see many people forcing this submission to god, or whatever the particular person thinks as a god, as now a tool to create a spectacle to suppress millions into seeing god as a physical being and not a religion.
Thus this causes the arguments in the world we all witness.
Reflection:
I see politics and westernised capitalism and even communism trying extremely hard to create and become the ultimate god to humanity and thus end religion.
This won't happen in reality, as religion cant be split, it's clearly all as one, as per Abrahamic law, but it's being attempted in the 21st century either way from minority groups that seem to have an insatiable hunger to carry on spitting negatives on religion no matter what the protest subject is.
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Entry: 6
Research on 2010 Student Protests
https://www.huckmag.com/perspectives/the-untold-story-of-the-2010-student-protests/
In 2010 I covered one of my first ever protests from start to end, I went in as a buzzing excited young man of 25 years old, freshly kitted out with a donated DSLR from the princess trust, and my first ever DSLR I have ever owned.
Reflection:
To this day I still call this day my entry point into the world I have now seen within media and the propaganda it entails for a story.
I added this research to show more in-depth research of such a major event within protests that was covered by mainstream, unlike today where major protests are blocked by politics and mainstream media, this protest was published around the world.
And I was there.
Click here to see images from this day that I shot on my first ever DSLR the Cannon 1200d 2nd hand.
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Entry: 7
Looking for Langston | Isaac Julien
The research of Isaac came after my visit with the class to the south London gallery, known otherwise as The Barbican.
The celebrating queer Harlem project / Looking for Langston, a moving image production that was on show at the gallery (2 floors, it took near 2 hours to complete this walk around) got my attraction for the music used, which included the 1980s and 90s rave and pop culture.
Reflection:
The way the video was constructed attracted me to try a similar thing with my works, using music over the main video to tell more of a story for your audiences to engage in whilst viewing.
The use of analogue and contrast makes his work stick out more for me, as it shows the aesthetics that Issac is showing around the culture gay community, but for me whilst I watched his productions and walked around the exhibition.
I didn't think of homosexuality when I watched Issac's work, I was thinking of a change of society, and it is observed that it's a classic way only Issac can do.
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Entry: 8
Ed Ruscha, by studying his style, will help me make comparisons to my work within this project and further on.
The "Twenty Six Gasoline Stations" Project, one of Ed's most famous works within a picture album book, inspired me in my 2nd year at university. I was shown this via my lectures. The essence of "documentary" within "change" inspired me to have an idea that includes Documentary, photo diaries, change and ignored change that eventually becomes reality and examples my year 3 project A life of Lockdown, documenting over a year of national lockdown living on my own with no family hardly around me and only having my camera as my source of relief for my mind.
Ed Ruscha most definitely is one of my top researched artists that have inspired me.
‘Ruscha plays with language in his text pieces, using devices such as onomatopoeia (a word that sounds like its meaning), puns, alliteration (a phrase or series of words where the first or second letter is repeated), and contrasting meanings.’ Tate Modern
Reflection:
The images above relate to my style of photography, see it, think it, shoot it.
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Entry: 9
How do you write a script for a Mockumentary? (forum)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/5a5dcd/how_do_you_write_a_script_for_a_mockumentary/
What is Mockumentary?
A documentary film is a film that shows true-life histories or current event exposure. ... Mockumentary is a television program or movie captured in the way of a documentary film is captured but it contains fictitious and frequently mocking subject matter that presents in a non-fiction or documentary format
My interest in this subject formed from observing the issues forming around me in Whitehall from august 2020 to the current 2021, and how I would be able to document and write a script within a mockumentary form.
Reflection:
This research helped me understand more into the difference between documentary and mockumentary.
I like to find forums, as it is a more direct reply from a person and also you can personalise your replies to a direct subject or find that subject to suit your needs.
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Entry: 10
Photo gallery recommendations London
This research is as it says in the title, to find galleries in London.
I wanted to find the best galleries and to observe how the works are put up and how I could form a gallery space in the future.
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Entry: 11
What is Delphi Technique? (google search)