After living under a regime that governs by slogan, I found myself trying to reduce what I took to be the lessons of 2020 into a similar refrain: “Believe the Science”, “Assume the Worst”, “Act Now and Save the Planet”, which was OK, but it was also kind of ugly and hectoring, which is the way of the slogan.
Is it possible to communicate something of this, to retain the punch and urgency of these staccato phrases, but also leave some room for the reader to make their own sense of the moment? I found those words in the work of the late Ulrich Beck.
Nearly thirty years ago I wrote a doctorate and a book on the then esoteric subject of social theory and the environment, including the work of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck and his pioneering work on the idea of a risk society. Beck could see the ways in which our mounting environmental and social crises were undermining the legitimacy of expert cultures of all kinds, from politics to science, as our capacity to transform the world outran our capacity to regulate and limit that power.
A month into lockdown I reread some of Beck’s work, begged Nick and Ellen to let me back in the print shop, and with much help and support from both of them, it is his words that that you can see in the prints on this page: sociological haiku meets concrete poetry, ee cummings meets comic book panels.
They are currently up on the walls of the chocolate factory within Centrespace, but I would much prefer them to be placed on the lecterns from which our rulers are currently speaking to us.
David Goldblatt is a writer, academic and broadcaster. Follow his letterpress work on Instagram @david_sgoldblatt
Set of four photographs: top left and right by Lily Watts; bottom left by Nick Hand; bottom right David Goldblatt.