Everyday Radical

“Everything you have been told about creativity is wrong.” (Mould, 2018, blurb)

Decolonisation

"A large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention."

--John Berger.

As illustrators, our ways of seeing are deeply shaped by the values we've inherited, whether from family, education, media, or culture. It is vital to notice these inherited frameworks to question whether they truly serve us. What might it mean to imagine your creative self living by entirely different values and to envision new ways of being and making that are not defined by dominant systems?

Prevailing narratives of productivity, efficiency, perfection, and individualism often confine our creative practice. Only a slave quantifies its existence through productivity. Instead we should explore alternative approaches of slowness, noticing, care, ritual, and spontaneity. Exploring how we might decentre Western authority in artmaking by applying Daoist adjacent philosophy.

For Zhuangzi, to be radical is to free oneself from rigid modes of thought and return to a natural, spontaneous way of being. Radicalism, in this sense, is not opposition but acceptance, a recognition that all things change. Wu Wei (無為, “doing less, not more”) and Ziran (自然, “returning to one’s natural way”).

By questioning “default” ways of seeing and living, this project re-centres the everyday as a site of quiet resistance and renewal.

John Berger also reminds us that “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” (Ways of Seeing, 1972) In a world moving at high speed, learning to slow down, question your defaults, and pay attention to the overlooked isn’t just philosophical, it’s a core creative skill. This project helps you explore that unsettled space. When you disrupt your habits, notice the unnoticed, or shift your routine even slightly, you begin to see the world differently and when you see differently, you draw differently. Illustration thrives on subtle acts of observation and imagination. Small everyday experiments can radically transform your visual language, deepen your personal voice, and expand the kinds of stories you’re able to tell. The brief trains your creative intuition in the most direct way possible: through lived experience, tiny disruptions, and attentive looking. To illustrate well, you must first learn to see well and seeing begins in the everyday.

WE TOO ARE TRAPPED IN A SYSTEM – WE CANNOT SEE BEYOND IT – BUT THERE IS MORE OUT THERE

“Being creative today means seeing the world around you as a resource to fuel your inner entrepreneur.”

- THE TRAP Adam Curtis & "freedom"

- Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers

**Finish writing**

Skeptic challenges

We were given various sets of tasks to choose from that wwould challenge ourr everyday in small incremental steps. Our visual work should come from what the challenge felt like. The feelings and moments are the material.

I chose the skeptic-inspired tasks. I'm self-aware enough to know I overthink myself into delerium, often over nothing, but rarely challenge myself into overcoming this.

Task Set III SKEPTIC-INSPIRED CHALLENGES

(Questioning beliefs, suspending judgement, noticing assumptions)

1. The Assumption Log

Write down every assumption you make for 24 hours (“That person is annoyed,” “This will be boring”). At night, question each: was it true?

2. One Day Withheld Judgement

Whenever you catch yourself forming an opinion, pause and say:“I don’t actually know.” Notice what that creates.

3. Reverse the Opinion

Take a belief you hold strongly, and argue the opposite for 5 minutes in writing. Not to change your mind — just to stretch it.

4. Doubt the Default

Whenever you do something on autopilot, ask: “Why this? Why now? Why like this?” See where the questioning leads.

I came across a stand run by the Revolutionary Communist Party on my way back from a lesson. Normally I walk straight past these sorts of things, encounters always prompt the same thought, what difference do they think they'll make? "Communism" is such a tainted word they'll seldom bring in socialists, it seems doomed from the start. If anything they risk further damaging the broader left's reputation further.

This time I caught myself. I witheld judgement. I've always considered myself left-wing, but I see communism as anachronistic, not a viable economic model, nor do I believe the RCP will be able to gain meaningful influence, especially considering the growing reactionary climate in the UK. Not even Sultana and Corbyn's Your Party would openly associate with them.

Still, I don't have an answer. And I'm still growing and maturing, so what do I know? Well I know the left does lack a credible alternative, and Labour’s polling continues to deteriorate. So, rather than sashay past I approached the stand and listened to what they had to say. To their credit, the people there are doing more than I am. My political grievances rarely leave the confines of a keyboard. In the end I bought a newspaper and a magazine featuring Constructvist art on the cover. Their sincerity was unmistakable, their hearts clearly in the right place.

If the Assumption log taught me anything it's that I care far too much about others' opinions. Virtually all the assumptions I made were about what people were thinking, primarily of me. I need to chill out.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

For my reversing of opinions, I decided write about idealism.

The phrase above is one I resonate with, used mockingly to describe pointless debates that seem to have no practical relevance. It was used way back against medieval scholastic philosophers or theologians who would discuss trivial metaphysical questions while the world burned around them. It is this detachment from reality that, in my opinion, idealism embodies. Idealism's focus on the non-phsyical, that reality is mental or spiritual, is the embodiment of abstract talk, metaphysical and impossible to be measured. In this way, I am a materialist. So for this task I tried arguing for idealism.

I wanted to do something odd and unexpected partly to amuse myself, partly to unsettle my flatmates, and perhaps make a small point. What came to mind was a VICE interview I'd watched of Slavoj Žižek in which he showed a portrait of Stalin hanging by his apartment entrance and remarked "I keep that there so that idiots ask me about it".

Our landlord and I have had our fair share of disagreements from broken appliances to temperamental boiler, but his most random rule is his absolute ban to sticking anything on the walls, for fear that a bit of adhesive tack might leave a mark.

In response, I staged my own quiet rebellion. I printed out photos of Mao Zedong (famously known for not being the biggest fan of landlords) and stuck them up all around the house.

A story our lecturer told recently also inspired the antics I pulled. Back in 2024, the inaugural year of the Design and Digital Arts building, some students protested the overly rigid rules. For a building intended for creative practice, it is incredibly sterile. The students were (and we still are) forbidden from displaying artwork on the walls to maintain a "professional" image that is palatable to the suits. So in response they stuck a tiny, crudely drawn sticker on the ceiling of the stairwell. Laughably insignificant, yet is provoked an emeergency staff meeting where admins urged lecturers to clamp down on the "rebellious" behaviour. Quite absurd.

Lennon Wall

Musical Philosophy

1. Find a song: Something that feels reflective about today
2. What is the smallest moment in the song that feels brave, honest, or disruptive? (a single lyric, a tone shift, repeated phrase, emotional contradiction, a feeling)
3. Translate feeling into visual qualities
4. Remove the obvious
5. Develop your idea into an abstract album cover or gig poster

Recently I've been invested in the work posted on Metalabel, a website "helping creative people cooperate", having discovered it through Joshua Ciatrella and the online research group he founded, Do Not Research.

The first thing I "collected" was a book by Mindy Seu documenting A Sexual History of the Internet, a participatory lecture performance told through the audience’s phones. It is a polyvocal story, whose citations are read aloud by the audience — performance as re-citation.

I bought The Kawayoku Tales: Aestheticisation of Violence in Military, Gaming, Social Media Cultures and Other Stories by Noura Tafeche published by Akisoma in Slovenia.

I tried making something similar to LOOBTOPIA the film, by Ruby Bailey.

During the Christmas holidays, I did not go outside that much. Which is obviously not my best work, boundaries were not pushed.