Some Radical Shit Is Going Down
1. To Curate or Not to Curate
So, as you do, we are having a curator. Then the curator isn’t working out. We seem to be seeing things from different angles. Some strategic moves are made. First by curator. Then me. Then producer. It’s dead simple really. HOME want to see their press release a certain way. I get that. But I have had this magical thought. You can’t expect to get different results if you keep doing the same thing. Okay, I know other far more prestigious people have uttered that and similar lines. But this is the first time I truly get it.
I understand it during a mind-map. I practise mind-mapping every day at 5pm. Because no matter how fucking tired I am, or am going to be, when MY MUM IS WHITE starts, I will have to produce an 8’ x 8’ mind-map every day for 8 straight days. Then a 3-day break. Then 4 days. Then a 3-day break. Then 4 days. I just must set up a pattern in my mind. A habit. I must prove to myself it is possible,
So, the first one is 3’ x 3’. I haven’t done one that size before. It’s the actual size of the top of my oak barleycorn legged table. The table on which I did my first. Multi-coloured magic marker mind-map in 2002. I have it. I love. It.
2002
My first ever mind-map.
So, I do my first trial over the segregated sink pic. It is beautiful. It is truly beautiful. And I uncover white face. Then I investigate black face. I compare the two. But what nobody realises, when I do these mind-maps what I discover is real to me. It is an open sesame. White face is real. It is a syndrome. A byproduct of intuitionalism.
2025
Mind-map where I discover white face.
Last week's newsletter excerpt. '... White face makes sense to me. It’s not race, though it is definitely embedded in race. It’s institutions. Institutions have a certain language. Born and grown in the enlightenment. Paid for, sorry to say it, sometimes I get sick of my own one trick pony answer to everything, but it’s true, paid for by the stolen labour in the transatlantic slave trade. Think about it. Science. Art. Philosophy. (Don’t make me laugh.) All get a head start. They’ve got time to think about this shit. Plus, create the beautiful architecture to house it. The architecture we still visit today to be trained in the glamour of white face.' Link to full article.
https://lindabrogan-com.ghost.io/ghost/#/editor/post/6873be393251820001a73af8
2. Institutionalised
1996, my first job in 18 years. I am 36. I am hippy. Before that, I sell weed. I enter the post office, I am going straight so I can become a writer, I enter the post office. There is a bird on the tree. I watch it. I am a caged bird. I watch the women replacing the cards exactly as the UK Post Office plan dictates. I feel sorry for them. I felt sorrier for me. I vow I will never become like them.
2002, 6 years later. I am leaving on my last day. I am on my way to be on attachment at the National Theatre. Contact Theatre’s Writer in Residence. I am commissioned to write What’s in the Cat. And, yes, I am deliberately dropping names, so you think I am wonderful. Because I am wonderful.
The point I’m making is, on the last day, I cannot leave without replacing the cards, birthday, thank you, sympathy, exactly as the UK Post Office plan dictates. I go one better, I clean all the fucking shelves as well.
3. Nobody Sets Out to Be Institutionalised
I do my meditation in the morning. Tidy the house. Sometimes Yoga. Most days my morning pages. Always straight to creative work. After my emails. I must steady my day. I am institutionalised into my regime.
4. Get To the Point Linda
Once upon a time there was a curator. And the curator is gonna do what the producer expects them to do. I am going along with it. Cos I am institutionalised to think this is what must happen. But, no. Actually. I am a child of the 70s. The counterculture. I am watching this amazing show on Apple TV called 1971. I am 12 in 1971. Fuck institutionalised. I am only sorry I wasn’t old enough for LSD and free love.
5. Curation Entails How the Gallery Looks
What if its empty. HOME Gallery is empty. I’m feeling Jimi Hendrix coming on. And Janis Joplin. And The Who. And Pink Floyd.
Picket Lines (Sister) and picket signs (Sister)
Don't punish me (Sister) with brutality (Sister)
Talk to me (Sister) so you can see (Sister)
Oh, what's going on (What's going on)
Yeah, what's going on (What's going on)
Oh, what's going on.
Woodstock. Rolling around the floor naked in mud. Hahahaha. What if HOME is naked. And it fills according to our needs. I’m feeling more than an artwork. My MUM IS WHITE is a play too. A performance too.
Then 3 chairs arrive. Cos, we need them. And we chat: me, the participant, and the psychologist Adam. And the participant produces some writing, private, generated by what they think a ‘half-caste’ sink looks like. And then we go to lunch. And then they leave. And I transform our interaction into an 8’ x 8’ mind-map where I uncover something marvellous: I couldn't see or didn't understand when we were actually interacting. And every day we proceed like this.
6. Prep Day
This Wednesday is our — me, Adam and the participants — prep day together.
Curation as a team
What do our bodies need — any disabilities?
Logistics?
Colour palette?
Details? Moleskines to log journey and build practice?
Exorcism as a team
What are our individual skills?
What are our individual passions?
What moon god/ spirit animal are you channelling?
What is the purpose of our exorcism — where are we going?
7. 23.07.25 Plan
Morning.
10 — 10.15. Intro.
10.15 to 11.00. Holes in the letter of agreement? Sign.
11.00 — 12.00. Write house rules. Declare one non-negotiable.
12.00 — 2.00. Lunch.
Afternoon.
2.00 — 2.45. Curation as a team. Answer the 4 simple questions.
2.45 — 3.30. Exorcism as a team. Answer the 4 simple questions.
3.30 — 4.00. Evaluation. Printed. Answer.
What did we do?
What did we learn?
What worked?
What could have been done better?
8. I’ll Let You Know How It All Goes
Plus, when I shake my paint-pen, it sounds like a graffiti artist's spray can. I feel so cool.