Today has seen the celebration of “Remembrance Sunday”, when throughout the country there are commemorative events of various kinds, marking the end of the Great War, but also providing an opportunity to remember the victims of all war. I have always been rather ambivalent about this occasion because I definitely has a double aspect veto it. On the one hand it provides an occasion for the celebration of the claims of loyalty which the state has on us. I have to admit that I am very ambivalent about that side of it, especially because I have a lively respect for those who have refused to take part in war on grounds of conscience. On the other hand, it does provide an occasion on which it is possible to hold up to public attention the terrible cost of all wars, and to demand that these be justified.
My ambivalence is most noteworthy within the local context of the village in which I live. On the occasions a third aspect of the occasion is visible. The celebration of Remembrance Day is possibly the occasion upon which community is most visible.
At the moment also I am in the middle of working on a possible picture which has been inspired by the crowds celebrating the recent royal jubilee, which I saw as representing a kind of “dance of death”. The trappings marking the celebration of the state seemed then to have a markedly double edge, by which what appeared at one level to be a display of the greatest solidarity but at the same time appeared to herald its decline.