Mickey Taking Misuse

22 min readSep 22, 2023

A gimmickey Art of Remote (Re)viewing: A not so quick dip into #Art, #Technology, and Micheál O’Connell / Mocksim’s .. . .. Systems Interference.

Little actual human agency might be even necessary in an interconnected world of widespread yet ironically evasive A.I. enabled electronic intractability, our individual arty creative skillz perhaps lying just beyond never knowing enough to become truly technically expert contemporary digital artists, a moving modern money honey hole in a rolling digital doughnut not to be savored but spondiciously anticipated and analytic-ized, forgotten before ever even encountered, being eaten, seen, smelled or spent, an Arte Povera passive aggressively pursued with the aid or obstacle of a sugary substantial Irish arts council commission grant and subsequent touring spoiler spondulicks, consumed by and within widespread public purview yet without and beyond approved projected and accepted contemporary commercial aesthetic awareness, obliviously yet self-assuredly continually refreshed by being boom blasted by the many headed hydrants of hyperbolic hullabaloo, or a genuinely insightful mirror or hall of mirrors held up to a society sleeping at the upturned wheel.

System Interference in Drogheda Highlanes Gallery 2024 .. and online

https://www.mocksim.org/works.htm

Lies ?: Landscape La la languages litter and land from formal education’s own headed paper, classes, halls, halls of classes, rooms with reams of dreams crowded within mumbley mortarboard mirror rituals, popular post event Ken Robinson craniums being carried studiously by their respective pedagogical zombie studies student bodies to seek the recipe of those long gone well drawn knickerbocker glories that once provided a historical context for the earlier cultural sweetness of academic achievement. All the while, the looped and duped computer science professors ponder:

Don’t philosophising art teachers not say dem tech bros sure done fucked up that shiny new thing that was gonna save us all?

or is it perhaps that we instead funny as fuck arty techy Irish folks that’s all gone dulled down and dopey in that there UK, or with our shared new horizons they’re about to get all giggled up again on EU grants and shit?

Truth ?: Orphaned extra-mural others often come across as the dogs panned white, black, and about face, dollied up as mere virtually immersed alien impressions focused within our own repressed algorithmic algophilia, many of us outsider Irish actually artlessly agoraphobic assholes ironically alert yet unable to leave our own conceptual briers of Fintan O Toolbox’s Irish times of crumpling burning homes and papered record of the middle class mirror of south county gazette banjaxed with blazing over-priced houses below the heather, all the while incongruously we studiously further seek to earn technologies’ badges, paper, levels, financial, and virtual rewards, and furthermore, heretofore, the liminal laughability loyalty points for being genuine fans of those very International networked language games that make the art market an inferno of collective exclusions worthy of its own universities let alone academic departments.

Post Truth ?: Can anyone be truly struck by others’ questions, language, comments, insights, or art, being brilliant, either good, bad, or indifferent, when there’s this much deliberate macro-devastation in the seemingly recycled real of our burning neo-liberal capitalist planet?

Post Lies ?: In the early summer of 1982, I had managed to save up actual money from tips and pay in my part-time job as a waiter and barman and went on a random hitch hiking adventure around Ireland with two good friends, all three of us were young, not wholly naive but underage in terms of Irish alcohol laws, none of us being either eighteen nor adult. We three fortuitously hitched a lift with a kind man called Mick as he said he was driving out the side of Drogheda, we met him in a chip shop and he told us his loving wife had just given birth to their first child in the Lourdes Hospital early that very evening, and he kindly agreed to give us a lift out that way on his happy way home to Athboy to spread his personal good news about his new son.

I’d never even heard of Athboy but found myself in his front passenger seat enthusiastically chatting beside him en route because being a would-be world thespian, writer, and real arty fella like, I did have a ronnie; a then Irish almost mustache, while also being called Michael, Mick, Mickey, or the thespianonic Michael J, I tried not very hard to look any way intelligent or at least like the oldest of the three of us. When we got near Athboy I offered to buy Mick a pint in thanks for the lift and also in celebration of the birth of his new born little Michael, he surprisingly accepted and I brazenly and openly went into his local and bought pints for both Micks, then more for any others and for my own friends Frank and Brendan who barefaced and smooth faced half hid in a seated darker corner of the bar. I was surprisingly served without friction so before the staff could really assess my would be tash or have a chance to change their minds, I quickly ordered another round and sat down at the bar counter next to Mick, I received several pints in return and several more as gifts from Mick’s friends throughout the rest of two pints for those two soon to be three Micks night, so many pints in fact that when we finally did manage to stagger outside the pub exceedingly late that night we three quite drunken young friends somehow succeeded against all odds in half pitching our soaked tent in the raining pitch dark on the first piece of seemingly good green ground we found, which early the next morning a few hours and a couple of very noisy smokey lorries later transpired to be a kind of grassy vergeless roundabout somewhere close to Athboy village.

Now I first offer that shared story experience above, in part to acknowledge my own utterly unrivaled accomplished stupidity and foolishness in my youth, but also that in my own real world personal experience ‘roundabout camping’ has been an actual if accidental real world thing for me and for others too on a number of shared youthful occasions, so seeing it mentioned as part of the System Interference art exhibition struck a real world comedic recognition echoing in me, also note at this point already there are really a lot of Michaels, Micheáls, Mickey and Micks in not just this piece of writing but in my entire life, and obviously Irish lives in Ireland, Britain, and elsewhere, in other less clear-minded times from over twenty years ago, I seem to have met many of them.

Although when the latter term Mick? is sometimes used interrogatively in mainland Britain it has more than occasionally been used in an uncomplimentary derogatory or pejorative way. I’m named after my maternal Grandfather, also a Michael known as Mick, who worked and prematurely died in Coventry in England aged 53, thus while shared normative language and common ancestral nomenclature at first may appear our neutral friend or humorous relation, these can also possess the hidden potential of a contentious shared weapon, like the ones specifically employed to provoke, or just prod prods in norn iron, or annoy west brits in cork, or those Irish just not Irish enough to be fully really truly Irish enough for those real Irish kind among them dare, it’s often an entire not quite living like the Gael, not merely a language thing nor only a case of the odd cupla focal.

The craic is where it’s really at.

Historically true fans of the comedic myles na gcopaleen know such imagined true value of any real Micheál to the true Irish Gael, or maybe it’s partly our essential historical Dantesque circles of true Gaels and real Micheáls, Proinséas, and Mickeys taking the Michael, shaping parts of Ireland’s national comedic if not cultural character. The craic is where it’s really at. I’m sure current Tánaiste and former Tea sock Micheál Martin or even Michael McGrath, current earnest Minister for Finance, could tell you about the death and/or resurrection of the true Gael, the genuine more than Irish enough embedded culture and that Irishness as narrative we often unknowingly not only traverse or support but subconsciously conspire to create in various false continuums of such real Irishness, fanning Flann like cycles with scientific sounding solutions like Dark Air and a few too many graces, cybernetic creativity in concentric comedic circles of Micheáls and Michaels, my own most recent not ironically Irish screen writing project a commissioned screenplay on the early life of actor Micheál Mac Liammóir, an Englishman artist born Alfred Wilmore in London who later assumed a successful Irish identity by calling himself Micheál and claiming he was born in Cork, such a great story that simply could never be replicated today in our era of validation and fact checking. .

The first clear thing for me to explicitly state about the work ‘systems interference’ is that I as long time digital writer and as digital artist clevercelt first got to know of Micheál’s work via his moniker (Mocksim) first through Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett’s Furtherfield network, maybe through Rhizome as well. I joined the Furtherfield community sometime between 2006–2008. I noticed Mocksim appearing there and around other bits of the Net and in various lists and social media. Micheál and I connected on social media platforms and he was very generous in recently sending me a print copy of John Roberts excellent short book which accompanies his exhibition, an Exhibition which is travelling throughout Ireland due to an additional dissemination grant from the Irish Arts Council, thus I will now have the opportunity to visit it physically, view, and experience it in Drogheda before February 2024 but as I discuss later I choose to initially remote view the exhibition elements among Micheál’s other body of creative/art work.

I believe it is important to note these sorts of connections upfront specifically when dealing with funded projects or elements from academia but more specifically in relation to reviews and or professional opinions with respect to academic books, papers, journals, works, exhibitions or artworks, since even an international academic field can be quite small there always exists the potential for prejudice, bias, or a conflict of interest.

‘Conflict of interest’ was something I was compelled to explain to an academic soliciting a journal review for a book which I had already reviewed three times at proposal, draft, and pre-print stages for its editor and publisher, the said academic didn’t recognize her requested post print journal review as being in any way open to any form of conflict of interest should I provide that to her. Which I obviously didn’t as I felt reviewing and essentially championing the work with the publisher twice had created the potential for such a conflict to arise, particularly if I were again the only one to champion it post publication in her Journal.

I think it could also be noted at this point that my own personal view is that the current Arts Council of Ireland, (which part funded this exhibition) all its contemporary officers, structures, representatives, policies, admins, apparatchiks, penpushers, associates, consultants, etc, should be canned, stepped down, removed, and anything that remained, even including comfortable chairs, given to saint vincent de Paul, be slowly and deliberately wiped from the face of the planet, with its supposed primary function of supporting broad National Arts in Ireland given back to the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media where it rightly belongs. I have written about this view elsewhere and will write about it again no doubt, but not later in this article.

In part preparation for writing this unintentionally meandering review, I viewed and read the variously available online aspects of this work, read the accompanying aforementioned short book and since the entire project for me contains several very positive learning and educational elements I also purchased some of John Roberts other print works to allow me to contextualize his specific comments in his three chapters (and a conclusion) with respect to his own previously expressed views overall. I also took some time to track down some of the sources John Roberts quotes within his book ‘Art, Misuse and Technology’ the text for Micheál’s exhibition. I also read Micheál’s PhD thesis.

Work from John Roberts I read to help me understand some aspects of system interference

I viewed online visual representations of some of the works discussed to be found in the exhibition (https://www.mocksim.org/works.htm). I watched a number of online videos among them the ‘Stupidity Dissent and the Machine — a gallery conversation’ youtube video that marked the opening of System Interference at Uillinn, with Cambridge University based academic, writer, and researcher, Caroline Bassett and the artist himself Micheál O’Connell which was dated Saturday 17 September 2022.

As anyone who knows me as clevercelt may already be aware I was making and producing art and writing on and across the net prior to 1998 so while I am contentedly an art world outsider and genuinely remote in many senses of that word I am deeply interested in not just Micheál’s work but also the discourses that can and perhaps should arise around it.

I’m also interested in ‘the craic’ and formal screenwriting too of course, along with Net Art, Digital and Electronic Literature, other theoretical writing about wit, comedy, clowns, jokes and just funny stuff that plays with language, much general writing about contemporary Art and of course various other free forms of experimental writing across and for our current networked cultures and various communities. For over twenty years and over 250K views my two ‘tongue in cheek’ taglines were, on the original michaeljmaguire.com : — ‘creative technology & technological creativity’ and on clevercelt.com — never content with content. So finding a work like ‘system Interference’ was a bit of godsend and certainly it didn’t disappoint when it came to the craic.

Despite or perhaps because of my own often lighthearted approach to these areas over the decades; both of those websites were subject to several systematic and sustained cyberattacks, eventual successful remote ruination, injections and hijacks and mass spamming that resulted in first an overwhelming amount of third party cheap low grade data flooding the websites, then the loss of all my own data, including art works, essays, writings, games, poetry, experimental work, some poorly stored back-ups and a complete reset to zero/blank from my then service providers un-backed up server, the clevercelt moniker was also used anonymously (by some unnamed cowardly somebody else) signing up to various really odd forums and questionable venues and services from which I then received a number of bills, invoices, comms, offers, and all manner of odd communication — some unnamed other not only didn’t like my netart and contrarian views they obviously simply didn’t like the idea of those being available to others.

One of my own first attempts at ‘digital art’

Just some of my early digital work is preserved through my own social media posts and links, some external drives and various educational and institutional repositories outside of Ireland, a lot of the work in its original version like digitalvitalism.com is currently lost at present. (i do intend to reinstate it in 2024) To me such experiences felt perhaps like a traditional artist suffering a major fire in their physical studio, and while watching it burn see the fire brigade at last turn up, but thanks to an inept ISP, with petrol pumps. However just seeing my stuff first suffocated in spam, surrounded and then fully swamped with random gigabytes of irrelevant dissonant data, and then completely wiped, did forcefully remind me of the ephemeral nature of pretty much everything not just on the net but on our beautiful burning planet. With some time to reflect upon it, that’s perhaps the unwelcome promise of the unfettered proliferation of A.I. generated data across the net, the eventual submergence of any genuine meaning…

‘Try not to make anything’

At the launch of the systems interference exhibition an initial discussion of networks as systems and systems as cybernetic networks, i.e. networks with feedback mechanisms, offers a glimpse of the intellectual environment in which Caroline Bassett can question whether the works Micheál creates are as such cybernetic systems in themselves, or representations, critiques, or metaphors of those systems. She views the systems Micheál creates as being different to the existing systems, certainly when it comes to scale and her initial interpretation of the word interference. I was surprised that second order cybernetics or Vannabar Bush didn’t get some mention at this juncture, he’s a staple of the linked abductive thinking brigade, particularly if the conversation somehow gets steered in the direction of Cybernetics and Cybernetic systems and the associative nature of the structure of the early net, but the question was asked “is the interference an act of metaphor, analogy, or ‘just living it ?” and it can be seen as the first basis of the different perspectives of the two participants emerging regarding technology within that initial launch discussion.

That discussion itself moved to the potential for participation in everyday systems such as satellite or even road networks. Technology systems as new and huge and imposing which ordinary people rarely consciously engage with, or in, yet remain part and parcel of those various systems.

And more interestingly for me, Michael’s question about their designers and bureaucracies that make decisions about such systems and why can’t we each be in or part of such a system? The opening conversation moved towards information systems and the potential virtualization of so many aspects of Human life, the methods of replication, modelling and/or depicting of various aspects of art itself as it became illusion, faking, making during modernism, the thing in itself, towards deliberate acts of appropriation, ready-mades, and on to Micheál’s central concern: ‘Try not to make anything’ which informs his practise and is central to this exhibition. Micheál is asked whether these strategies or tactics he’s used in developing his work are really thee only ones that can be used to successfully explore these issues at this time, it’s certainly an interesting if loaded question.

For me the answer may reside somewhere, perhaps beneath the replacement of Ireland’s high (moral) ground Crucifixes with efficient and functional, yet spiritually mundane if not bereft, purposeful Turbines and Rotatory mechanisms, a ritual replacement and a replacement of ritual which may offer an insight into some of the latent concerns informing Micheál’s approach to this work?

The Cambridge academic Caroline is interested in these intervention elements of his work, the interference of the title seen as that intervention, but as anyone who has ever switched on an old hoover while the radio or TV was already on knows, interference can be electronically non-unique in that you can passively interfere with all sorts of tech from reasonably afar and without such overt intervention, you can introduce a separate signal into the mix that interferes with the transmissions and receptions, not all interference is tactile or part of that novel, new, or subject to such structural specificity of said cybernetic feedback loops. Although (as mentioned earlier) I can attest to destructive hacking inducing feelings of artistic or technological damage to the recipient, my own history with hackers prior to those points in time were being among fellow learners, enthusiasts, friends and coders happily sharing and hacking each other’s codebases, hacking was once primarily a shared creative endeavour, ultimately respectful in a sort of unwritten rules of conduct sort of way, that was certainly true of those I met through my time working at cutting commercial edges of the early games industry, then with SCEE and later MS.

Conversely or perhaps more simply electronic rather than digital Interference has genuine potential to be a rebellious act of signal corruption outside of or beyond any system itself, it’s usually temporary and tends not to do any long term damage to such systems themselves. The brief mention of QR codes in the discussion, themselves a challenge to the perceived rapid adoption cycles of technology, remain to me in most use cases to be simple digital hooks, winding your attention (or device/browser) back in a split second to a predetermined virtual space or hypertext link, so while they are understandable and reasonable in terms of being employed to extend the exhibition outside the physical spaces that strive to contain it, QR Codes themselves can feel like a gimmicky aspect of viewer/ participant control with which I don’t usually interact and which I may (ab)normally refuse to see any intrinsic artistic merit. Yet within Michael’s exhibition there is a triptych of QR codes, an art format that emerged in the middle ages to offer devotees both narrative and devotional direction, it is an appropriate wall hanging for any would be technology evangelists. The trio, triplet, triptych, trinities or triduum were quintessential aspects of Irish Religious and public life from the foundation of the state.

Micheál states there is obviously a history of institutional critique but it appears not to be the most important aspect of this specific exhibition, he acknowledged that there are many complex ways in which Art and Artists can offer institutional critique and in sympathy also counters with the fact that many institutions can and should be defended for that very reason. That leads to a brief question about power in relation to these technological systems and the often not explicitly professed preferred evolutionary path many ordinary people feel we are all being pushed down, the function of art institutions as witnesses who challenge these powerful paths, these systematic moves and unseen agendas, and the expected role of the artist to not only point to the stupidity or artificial nature of some of that technological determination but to be an actor in terms of dissent, dissent with regard to their continued evolution and implementation without prior informed permission.

There are questions regarding the differential existing between such concepts as the ’Politics of the hack’ or ‘direct engagement’ or ‘direct action’ being either opposed or perhaps complimentary to ‘Interference’ within a possible paradigm called anti-computing, which itself isn’t really about being against computing in a sort of Luddite sense at all, more a term acting as a narrative frame within which observations about computing itself are made by generally less technically focused people.

Micheál’s stated preferences in response is to be non binary, neither for nor against, yes nor no, zero or one, black or white, right nor wrong, more within a middle ground of simple dissent, as John Roberts might have it the dissent of the court jester perhaps who in his joyful lampooning of a situation shines a light on it’s serious ramifications but does not submit himself to the political discourses of power and thus superficially seems removed from the hegemony of the powerful, thus in stepping back to a safe distance, in not sticking his oar in, not simply splashing around in those currents, ebbs and flows of power persist yet the jester is still disturbing those waters, the Artist as jester becomes a kind of tight rope walker, a combination of entertaining the watchful with his skilful traversal of a series of important questions, yet all the time remaining non-committal and on the right side of the power lines.

Thus when Caroline the Cambridge academic speaks at the launch to her own agenda of the histories of technology and how humans use or respond to technology and technological systems, questions as to whether there are simple patterns of behavioral response and adoption as many large technology vendors would have us believe, or a more confusing series of unanticipated and irregular responses that can and do occur, yet somehow these may remain outside any preferred commercial narratives, it is a long known fact that the video cassette recorder became a de facto babysitter upon widespread domestic adoption yet none of the manufacturers or vendors ever pushed such claims in their marketing or sales literature despite obviously being fully aware of it’s social and domestic role.

The idea that technology implementation rides roughshod across an entire population forgets the fact that Irish CND, Christy Moore and Moving Hearts, a host of musicians and artists and a generation of would-be hippies prevented the Irish Government from adopting an unsafe nuclear power plant at Carnsore Point in the late 1970s with the main protests taking the form of three festivals, I still have my yellow button badges somewhere.

One need only acknowledge the widespread societal resistance to the reformation of the water system in Ireland in the form of sustained public protests against introductory charges for household use to see that society here in Ireland does not see all technological nor political impositions as inevitable. Ireland threw off its agrarian shackles and embraced technology wholeheartedly in the 1970s, to complement the existing universities five RTCs (Regional Technical Colleges) were opened in 1970 at Athlone, Carlow, Dundalk, Sligo, and Waterford; one at Letterkenny in 1971; Galway in 1972; Cork in 1974, and Tralee in 1977, these since upgraded first to ‘institutes of technology’ and more some recently combined together to become four technological universities, and this alongside some other institutions like DCC and UL which were originally of that ilk before accelerating to University status in their own right, and in earlier applications. Apple has been operating and researching in Cork since 1980, IBM for 67 years, Microsoft in South Dublin since 1985, since Intel’s arrival in 1989 it has invested more than €30 billion in its Kildare manufacturing plant, Ireland’s relationship with technology is a central tenet of deliberate overall economic strategy that citizens are informed about on most budget days, good news stories are ones involving more tech companies and more tech jobs, and those 62 redundancies that Paypal announced and others in Google slimdowns also make national news, while we may not yet have connectivity of a south Korea our technological awareness and general levels of education are surely among the highest in the western world.

National culture built on local knowledge and local access.

What is interesting recently is seeing the influx of technological creativity impacting the screen and now small screens sector. I first went to hear about Ireland’s emerging screen strategy in that regard around 1989, a conference in Galway called, what else, ‘the big picture’. What it confirmed to me then, and later when I sat as a member of the games advisory panel for the establishment of Dublin’s digital hub, and again as a committee member of IGDA, and then again on various other industry and expert panels throughout Ireland as they were formed from time to time, was that despite all that seeming progress, success or failure within technology circles in Ireland, and while all great art may be parochial, our country and it’s policies at so many levels remains fixated upon and informed by the concepts of the parish, whom you know, where you live, your economic circumstances, how you speak and how you play your game, to whom and what you genuflect, a national culture built on local knowledge and local access.

Long implemented and trusted cronyism and vouched for connection isn’t overnight going to adopt a new open regime of meritocracy and access, success can be contingent on exposure, expression, luck or some other intangible, it is a foregone assumption if not conclusion that you can talk the talk and walk the walk, specifically with regard to artistic or commercial success, it is expected that you are either talented and dedicated or very well connected, sometimes either, often both, connected nepo babies have long got the preferred bottle in Ireland. My own favourite art world guide book published by Sternberg is Martin Herbert’s excellent ‘tell them I said no’ for it shows that a third way is possible with respect to the art world, simply choose to play the game your own way but be fully prepared to face the consequences of that choice

It took 42 minutes into the launch before the mention of comedy arose, and in particular what John Roberts had written with respect to comedy vis-a vis the exhibition and the work. The work as a way to offer modes of respite, have some fun with the usually depressing aspects of modern technology in society, waving at security cameras, when people are moaning, warning or complaining about technology instead going with it and perhaps lampooning that by virtue of over exaggeration or supporting the technological advances, pretending you are a car….

Art as Mirror ? Exhibition as a hall of Mirrors..

The cultural power and influence of the catholic church continues to wain in Ireland, the many sex and abuse scandals of the 80s, 90s, and more, undermined the faith of several generations in the institution of the church as a power solely for good in Irish Society. The Pope in 2021 conceding the existence and apologizing for the identification and sequestering of three thousand pedophiles within the French Church hasn’t restored faith in the transparency nor openness of the Irish Church. The fact that so many orders under the church umbrella managed to evade full reparations to victims of abuse, while also retaining many of their valuable assets through some strangely inept agreement with government on liability, means that few believe the church has theoretically nor practically fully paid for the historical abuses that took place.

While historians like Diarmaid Ferriter and others will attest, the church quickly and stealthily filled the power void of the British Empire when it was forced to abandon its claim on 26 of the 32 counties, we recognize that the church quickly ensconced itself into the daily fabric of Irish Life within schools, hospitals, committees, local councils, and so many parts of fledgling Independent Irish Society, the remnants of Hedge Schools, shrines, holy wells, and Catholic martyrs littered the republic’s emotional landscape and these were again activated as often and as plausible as possible. Ireland was selected to host the Eucharistic Congress in 1932 under the marketing of the 1500th anniversary of Saint Patrick’s arrival. The theme was “The Propagation of the Sainted Eucharist by Irish Missionaries” and an ‘impervious’ faith of the Irish that was seen Internationally to be celebrated. The early church’s practice of claiming long revered public places as newly appointed sites of worship to their particular version, of systematizing the turning of pagan festivals into the Feast day of Saints, of using their own delimited ecumenical imagination to overwrite thousands of years of free spirited spirituality with control mechanisms for an entire society would suggest that the Irish are malleable at best, manipulative at worst, since much of the clergy were themselves Irish. What it does foreground is the long established concept of interference in all elements of Irish Life and Life systems.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Life has a purpose, but a strange purpose. When you come to the end of the road and find perfect insight you will see that enlightenment is a joke.”
“A joke,” said the American,and stared seriously at me.
“Life is a joke; you’ll learn to understand that sometime-not now, but it will come.”

The above quote from Page 10 of ‘The Empty Mirror.’

As the artistic administrator from cork observed during the exhibition, somebody contacted the guards (about the upturned car outside the exhibition opening in cork) and the guards said: “No… art.”

A really simple but powerful example of interference in the often most necessarily staid and rigid state apparatus the Garda Síochána…

System interference is an insightful and brilliant piece of sustained evocative exploration and questioning of not only the role of systems in our contemporary lives but also our individual and collective complacency, awareness and agency or lack thereof. Visit and Enjoy.

I will end with a contextualising quote from Michael’s Thesis:

“With reference to August Strinberg’s On Chance in Artistic Creation (1894) Roberts argues that the notion of ‘systematic antisystematicism’ (2011, p.218), as it emerged from impressionist and post-classical practices, continued to be a factor long into the twentieth century. This, despite the direct, as well as indirect, impact of the Russian Revolution on avant-garde activities, and despite Duchamp and the growth of conceptualism. Art ought to have endedapparently. George Santayan’s Reason in Art (1905) pointed to its necessary submission to utility: ‘[t]he job of the artist is to give “practice everywhere thegreatest affinity to the situation”’ (Roberts, 2011, p.222). It was not until Debordian Situationsim, and later the rise of conceptual art proper, that a more self-destructive phase was ardently entered in to.”