Gore End
Monotony is the most beautiful or the most atrocious thing…the most atrocious if it is the sign of an unvarying perpetuity.
Simone Weil in Gravity and Grace (1947)
The saying goes that all good things must come to an end: an end to make a new start, as outlined in the above quote monotony is indeed dull, new is exciting.
The will to force something either to continue to live or to try to bring something back is an aspect of death regenerated. In relation to Zombies and reanimation, there has been a rebirth but as such it is only the shadow of the former life, as seen in the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein.
Death and rebirth can be viewed in various ways, a chance for a new existence as in evolution and succession theory; it is indeed a fight and there are other species fighting to survive. Bushfires or Wildfires are known to be beneficial to the wilderness by removing dominant vegetation and exposing the soil to the sun, whilst fertilising the virgin earth with ashes from the dead plants. The time comes to let other species have a chance; when a tree falls, new life on the forest floor flourishes.
Let’s look forward to the possibility of some new and wonderful things, out with the old and in with the utopian new “…a world with full and fair proportions; in which, through the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places.” Henry David Thoreau “Walden Or: A Life in the Woods” (1854)
Revised text by Hannah Lees from: “Some things need to die to be reborn” (2009)
Jack Lavender
Jack Lavender (b. 1983, Canterbury, UK) lives and works in London, UK. He received his MA in Sculpture at RCA in London and his BA at UCA in Canterbury. Selected solo exhibitions include Tired but Wired at The Approach, London (2021), Sorry I haven’t been at 650mAh in Brighton (2018), Baggy to Bootcut at The Approach, London (2017), and When We Look Outwards in Space We Look Backwards in Time at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2015).
