John Ashton Motorbike Speech

8/13/2019 John Ashton Motorbike Speech

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Royal College of ArtSustainRCA Talks: Breaking through the BarriersDyson Lecture Theatre, RCA Battersea, 30 October 2013

Talk by John Ashton (expanded text)

ContextThe speaker is the last of four. The precedinginterventions have converged with wit, energy, andoriginality on the same central proposition, that a structuralshift is needed not only in the economy but in itsunderlying cultural and political substrates. Theimportance of open, inclusive power relations has been arecurring theme.

Lise Hovesen, a recent RCA graduate, illustrated thiswith the campaign to save Rotherhithe library, of whichshe has been a leader. Otto von Bu sch, thought leader infashion, design and craft, imagined what fashion might belike if it were a nation state. How might its protocols beredesigned to eliminate exclusivity and coded aggression?Jos ephine Green, prominent in the social innovationmovement, predicted a shift from "pyramid" to "pancake"models of production and exchange, and urged that thesebe embraced: sustainable development could not beaccomplished without them, and social media platformsnow made them possible. A young, lively, cosmopolitanaudience of around 150 has been responding warmly.

Taped now to the speakers podium at stage left, hangingdown in front like a banner, is a clean white sheet. On thetable alongside is a large can of spray paint, chestnutbrown, bought that afternoon. There is also a soundsystem connected to an iPod, ready to play. Gina Lovett,who has organized the event, presides and has justintroduced the speaker.


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Motorbike RecedingReflections on Art, Politics and Climate Change

Hands I

1. Before we get properly under way I wonder if I couldpersuade a couple of volunteers to come up and joinus. With Ginas permission Id like to start by doingsomething quite primitive together.

2. Two female volunteers hesitantly stand up, both nearthe centre of fully occupied rows of seats. Thank youboth for coming forward without knowing exactly whatyou are letting yourselves in for. I see you are preciselythe two people in this room with the maximum numberof other peoples legs to climb over to get to the front.Gina, can I ask you also to join our volunteers?

3. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big hand to ourvaliant human guinea pigs here.Applause.

4. Now, ladies and gentlemen, a warning. Please: dont trythis at home. It is best done wearing surgical gloves -though actually I see we have Marigolds tonight. Therewill be fumes which if inhaled can be intoxicating.

Afterwards we may need industrial cleaning products.

5. Id like to ask you each, if I may, to put on one of these

rubber gloves. Your left hand or your right hand, eitherwill do, but please pull the glove on nice and tight.

6. Now, flex your hand as far as you can, with each fingerstretching out, make a real hand shape, and place yourhand flat on the sheet. Thats perfect, thanks, hold it justlike that. Now, this is where it gets interesting.


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7. The speaker picks up the paint can, and holds it a fewinches in front of the sheet over one of the glovedhands. He presses the nozzle. Nothing happens. Hetries again, with the same result. A look of alarmcrosses his face. He turns towards the audience.

8. Oh dear, I may need some help here. I cant understandwhy no paint is coming out.

9.A member of audience shouts from the upper tier: the black plastic has to fall out. Hold the can upsidedown. The speaker does as instructed and appears

relieved as a small annular sleeve that had beenlocking the nozzle falls to the ground. He holds up thecan and presses. A pulse of sprayed paint issues fromthe nozzle, together with heavy fumes. The speakerrelaxes.

10. Thank you sir. That had me worried for a moment.And Im sure nobody would want to suggest that you or

anyone else here tonight might have prior experience ofthese matters for example in relation to spraying painton outdoor walls.

11. Turns back to volunteers. Now lets try again.

12. The speaker repeats his previous action. This timethe can sprays paint. A stencilled outline of the

volunteers handtakes shape in rich brown near theupper left corner of the sheet. He repeats the actionwith the second volunteer, whose hand is about 18inches away, upper right on the sheet.

13. Gina, were going to do your hand now. Rememberthis is the Royal College of Art. Please dont just putyour hand anywhere. Position it carefully in relation to

our other two hands applying all the aesthetic


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considerations appropriate for this institution.Remember the Golden Mean.

14. Gina places her hand carefully a few inches lowerthan the other two hands, and slightly off centre to theleft. The speaker presses the nozzle. There are nowthree hand outlines on the sheet. Together they form astriking and indeed somewhat primitive image.

15. Ladies and gentlemen thank you for bearing with me,and please thank Gina and our two volunteers.

Applause.

16. Now, for the time being, lets just leave thehandshanging there, as a kind of motif for what may for whileseem like a circuitous journey through a landscape ofart, politics and climate change. But well come back tothe hands and, trust me, they will help us make senseof the road we have travelled.

Atom Heart Mother

17. Now, letshave a change of medium.

18. Has anybody here heard of Pink Floyd? Please raiseyour arm if you have. Everyone raises an arm. Pleasenow keep your arm in the air if the titleAtom HeartMothermeans anything to you, otherwise lower it now.

Almost every arm goes down; only five remain raised.The rest of the audience looks puzzled.

19. Now, sorry, this is a bit self-indulgent, its just for mycuriosity, but you five ladies and gentlemen can youkeep your arm raised if you likeAtom Heart Mother.Allfive arms remain raised.


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20. Well Im so pleased to see that. Not many peoplenowadays have heard of it, but those who know it dotend to like it.

21. Atom Heart Motheris an album by Pink Floyd. Itcame out in 1970, after the great Ummagummadoublealbum and before Meddle.

22. Its now almost forgotten. It did get to the top of thealbum charts but the critics didnt really like it. There is aclash of idioms, an interplay between the kind ofinstrumentation youd expect from Pink Floyd - guitar,

bass, drums and so on - and a more classical orchestralsound with lots of brass. It surprised people and somefound it pretentious.

23. The final nail in the coffin forAtom Heart Mothercame when, a few years later, the band themselvesstarted to say disparaging things about it, especiallyRoger Waters and David Gilmour. Indeed they pretty

much disowned it. So it has ended up as little more thana footnote in the musical canon of the times.

24. But Ive always had a soft spot for it. Yes, it did comeout when I was at an impressionable age, 13 or 14 Iguess. But there is a certain grandeur to it; there arepassages of tenderness; and there is in places a richlylyrical quality to match anything you can find in the

music of that era.

25. Anyway, Im going to play you a bit of it, just a minuteor so. In fact Ill give you a choice.

26. I want you to listen carefully for the sound of amotorbike. When you hear the bike, can you pleaseshout or scream - you can make any noise you like as

long as its loud.But you dont have to do that. If you


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make no noise, Ill know you are pretending you haventheard the bike. And in that case you can have 15 moreminutes of Pink Floyd. But if youd rather hear the restof this talk, make a noise. So were at a crossroads - itsbasically up to you!

27. The speaker presses a button. The sound systemplays the passage running from 1:002:15 into the titletrack of the Atom Heart Mother album. As the passageends there is the sound of a motorbike being startedand ridden off: it recedes into the distance. Theaudience shouts cacophonously and the speaker

switches off the sound.

28. So you decided to hear it. Thank you for that. If youwere listening carefully you might also have noticed,

just before the bike, what could be a bomb falling from aplane, that descending whining sound, a sound of 20

th

century war.

Atom Heart MotherMotorbike Receding

29. When I Iisten to Atom Heart Mother, I always sense apoignancy, an atmosphere of loss, and nowhere morethan in the passage Ive just played, the motorbikereceding.

30. I never knew why this music made me feel like that.Then quite recently I heard an interview on the radiowith Roger Waters, it could have been on Desert IslandDiscs. He was talking with great intensity about hisfather, during the war. You got the sense that this wasthe period around which his whole life had subsequentlyrevolved, that all his music had been a kind of quest to


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make sense of what happened at that time, maybe alsoto liberate himself from it1.

31. His father had been a pacifist. When the war beganhe declared himself a conscientious objector. But laterhe changed his mind, he joined the army and went offto fight. And not long afterwards Mrs Waters received atelegram informing her that her husband was missingpresumed dead, in the titanic battle for Montecassino,between Naples and Rome, where so much bloodspilled into that warm soil of antiquity through the Springof 1944.

32. At the time, Roger was 5 months old.

33. So a picture comes into your mind, almost as if itwere a scene from a film. A suburban street somewherein Surrey, thats where they lived. Its probably autumnor early winter 1943, leaves on the ground, maybeovercast and damp, lights on already in the houses.

34. And an open front door. Just outside it, perhapsframed in yellow light from the hallway, Rogers youngmother, 1940s pretty, coiffed hair and print dress,newborn Roger in her arms. And Rogersdad, in brandnew khaki, with his arms round them both, farewellkisses, one of those awful moments when you hopetime will stop because you dont want to do what you

have to do next.

35. Come home soon.

36. Home soon.

1In a TV interview seen by the speaker after delivering the speech, Waters says:

I want to be engaged, probably in a way my father would approve of.


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37. Finally he turns and mounts his bike. Its one of thosethroaty old British bikes, a Norton perhaps or aTriumph. The engine starts and he sets off, turning towave, home soon, and Mrs Waters waves back, andmaybe she holds Rogers arm and waves that too.

38. The motorbike recedes.

39. Home soon.

40. Only, you just know, watching the film, he nevercomes home. He dies bravely and never comes home

to be a father to his new son.

41. As I said, a sense of loss.

Atom Heart Mother - Art

42. Now I want to use that moment, that scene, to draw a

general conclusion about art. But I do this withenormous hesitation.

43. I may be transported by art, perhaps too easily for myown good, but I am not an artist. And many of you in theroom are proper artists. Some of you will no doubtbecome famous even, perish the thought, distinguished.

And who am I in such a room to offer you of all people

solemn declarations about the nature of art?

44. So please bear with me. This may not be how youexperience art. It is only something I feel myself, butanyway its something Id like if I may to share.

45. Also, heaven knows,Atom Heart Mother is hardlyBeethovens Ninth. I dont even know if Roger Waters


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intended with the bike sound to evoke his fathers lastfarewell.

46. But to me anyway that short passage from aforgotten album is full of meaning.

47. You see, we all have dads. And they always turn ourworld upside down, because eventually they alwaysleave us and never come back - unless, that is, weleave them first, in that even more unbearable inversionthat fate at its cruelest sometimes inflicts on humanbeings.

48. The idea of a father who leaves is universal, it is inthe human condition, it is part of who we are.

49. And heres my point.

50. We need, in any healthy culture, to be talking to eachother constantly about who we are, about the human

condition as we are experiencing it: reflecting,reviewing, questioning; constantly. Otto, thats surelywhat you were talking about when you mentioned theunsettling idea of the hotel civilization. If we dont keepthat conversation going, we lose our awareness ofourselves, we lose our humanity.

51. And we cant have that conversation without art.

52. Art is not the only medium, but it is a leadingmedium, for our conversation with ourselves about whowe are. It is essential to that conversation, because itreminds us in its constantly questioning way of what wehave in common, of what is universal.


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The Solution

53. But of course, life isnt only about who we are.

54. If that were the only thing that got us going, wedjustsit around endlessly peering into our own and otherpeoples navels like existentially troubled teenagers.

55. Life is also about what we do, our choices and ouractions. And thats politics. If you think about it, politicsis how we make choices together. In fact its the onlyway we have to make choices together, so it had better

work well: if politics stops working we are in trouble.

56. So now I want to make a generalization aboutpolitics, and to help me Im going to read a poem byBertholt Brecht, written in June 1953, towards the endof his life. Its called The Solution.

57. It goes like this:

After the uprising of 17th JuneThe Secretary of the Writers UnionHad leaflets distributed in the StalinalleeStating that the peopleHad forfeited the confidence of the government

And could win it back onlyBy redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the governmentTo dissolve the people

And elect another?

58. Now, you have to be careful with Brecht. He was ascourge of the fascists. His mesmerizing play about

Arturo Ui - Hitler as Al Caponeis on now in London.


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59. But after the war, Brecht lived in East Berlin. Hecame to some kind of accommodation with theCommunist regime, and in doing so he gave themcultural cover for their repressive behavior.

60. But then, on 17 June 1953, there was an uprising. Itwas started by construction workers and quickly spread.It is less well known nowadays than Budapest 56 andPrague 68, but it was an important event in the historyof the Cold War.

61. Anyway, the authorities responded with violence, and

tanks. People died, people were rounded up, and theuprising was soon defeated.

62. And that was too much for Brecht. At this point heturned against the regime. The Solution, written just afew days later,was his way of doing that.

63. It is a typically pungent attack on the arrogance of

power, the arrogance of incumbent power.

64. We may rule on your behalf the voice of authorityinthe world of this poem might say, but never think weare here to serve you. We are the masters, and if youthe people misbehave we will dissolve you. Dissolvethe people, what a brilliant, chilling phrase, in themiddle of a century that came to define itself by the

industrial scale on which peoples were dissolved byarrogant incumbent power at its worst.

The Solution - Politics

65. And my point here is that there is always anincumbency, and it is always arrogant. Otto, Lise,


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Josephine,youve all talkedtonight in different waysabout that arrogance of incumbencies.

66. And the incumbency sits at the top of politics, themachinery of government both national and local, themedia, business, finance, even dare I say it sometimesuniversities. It has the power, its hands are on thelevers, it pulls the levers on behalf of the people.

67. But power tends to corrupt. There is always atemptation to exploit the power you have in order toseek more of it; and never - really, never - any

inclination to yield power without exacting somesignificant price in return.

68. The incumbency will always claim to be acting in thebest interests of the people. But if it faces a choicebetween the peoples interests and its own, its reflex isto look after its own interests first. Thats just in itsnature.

69. And so if the people start making a nuisance ofthemselves, the incumbency, that is the government inBrechts poem, may at first try to ignore the people. Butif that doesnt work, the next step is likely to be anattempt to shut the people up, which is to dissolve thepeople, because in politics if you have no voice you arenothing.

70. And thats why in any healthy society there needs tobe a constant challenge to the incumbency, why wehave evolved systems of checks and balances,institutions of democracy, accountability, and the rule oflaw, so that power cant be abused and we all have areasonable expectation of being treated by it withfairness, tolerance, and humanity.


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71. But power is never satisfied, always hungry. Theincumbency is always looking, often without knowing it,for ways of subverting even those mechanisms.Sometimes it manages to hollow out the rules,conventions, forms and processes designed to protectthe people against, as it were, being dissolved.

72. And thats when the government, the incumbency,inevitably forfeits the confidence of the people. A gapopens as the people realize they are not getting theoutcomes they have a right to expect in return for theircompliance and for the taxes they pay.

73. And whenever that happens it is essential that thefailure of politics is acknowledged, that it is quicklyaddressed and corrected. Because if it isnt, you eitherget a repressive reaction and the people do getdissolved. Or the gap just gets wider and into it pourpopulists, demagogues, false prophets and pied pipersof every kind, all offering the illusion of simplicity in a

complex world, inevitably paving a path that itself leadsinevitably to repression and, again, to the dissolution ofthe people. The outcome is the same.

74. That is a lesson of history, never more telling than inBrechts own time.

75. So just to summarize: an incumbency will always try

to resist real change - even while sometimes positioningitself as a champion of change, just like the aristocratTancredi in Lampedusas novel whofamously declared:something is going to have to change around here ifwe want things to stay the same.

76. Just as a healthy culture needs art to ask questionsabout who we are, a healthy society needs politics that


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constantly questions incumbent power about what weare going to do.

Politics and Art

77. You may by now be wondering where climate changecomes into this and Ill have something to say aboutthat in a moment. But first it is worth having a quick lookat the relationship between art and politics.

78. You see, another thing that the incumbency tends to

do, often cant stop itself trying to do, is to coopt art forits own ends. Power wants art on its side not the otherside.

79. It was the coopted Writers Union that put up theposters in the Stalinallee.

80. But art is not part of politics. It can never be part of

politics. If it forgets that for a moment (again this is mypersonal view) it loses its potency as art and becomeseither propaganda or kitsch.

81. Im not really here to give you advice. But please,promise me, if ever you receive an invitation from thePrime Minister to attend a reception at 10 DowningStreet, youll decline it, especially if photographs are to

be taken (and photographs are, as we know, alwaystaken, because the politician like the policeman isalways on duty).

82. It seems to me that art by definition is always incontraposition to incumbent power. Art cannot enter theedifice of power; its proper place is tunneling under thefoundations of that edifice: all the time tunneling,

probing, exploring; undermining not propping up.


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83. There is only one place where art and politics come

into direct contact, like the Fifth Province at the mythiccentre of Ireland where opposing chieftains could meetand feast at the same table. That place is in the ancienttradition of satire, much practised of course by the Celtsthemselves. But in satire, the aim of art is to expose theincumbency to ridicule. Of all the checks and balancesever devised, satire is perhaps the most potent.

Climate Change

84. OK, I admit Ive been avoiding the subject, but let meat this point say something about climate change.

85. The extraordinary thing about climate change is thatit fits comfortably into both these frames of referenceeven though, as weve seen, they are inherentlyseparate one from the other. Climate change is about

who we are; and it is about what we do.

86. We have an awful tendency to overcomplicate thediscussion about climate change. Really the problem isvery easy to state and so is the solution.

87. The problem is that we have locked ourselves into asystem of production and consumption that depends on

fossil fuels. When we burn those fossil fuels wedestabilize the climate. If there is no climate security,then we cannot have food, water or energy security.Ultimately, as Josephine said, we will have competitionnot cooperation; competition tending increasinglytowards conflict.

88. Increasingly we will feel we are losing control of our

destiny, our capacity to build the future we want. We will


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feel more and more at the mercy of forces beyond ourcomprehension let alone our control.

89. But we know the solution, and we have the means toput it into effect.

90. We need to stop burning fossil fuels.

91. We need to use electricity to do more things insmarter ways while taking carbon emissions out ofelectricity. That will be quicker and easier if at the sametime we are using energy of all kinds in more efficient

ways.

92. We know what technologies we can use to do thatand they are available now. We know we can afford it,particularly now with the huge reservoirs of idle privatecapital that have built up following the financial crisis.We know the policies that will unlock that capital.

Climate - Politics

93. But we are not doing it. We can do it but we are notdoing it.

94. Could that be something to do with politics, withtendency of incumbencies to resist change?

95. The fossil energy system and the power system turnout to be very closely related.

96. Im not just talking abut the obvious producerinterests, big oil, big coal and so on.


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97. Its more complicated than that. Big oil and big coalare not separate from us, the people. We areintertwined, in all kinds of ways.

98. When you put petrol in your car, the tax you pay goesto the Treasury and pays for schools and hospitals.Make big oil a bit smaller and you make public servicessmaller.

99. If you are saving for a pension, its value probablydepends on the value of shares in companies like Shelland BP. Shrink big oil and your pension shrinks.

100. The effort to deal with climate change will not reallybe about technology or economics or policy. It will be apolitical struggle, a struggle between the incumbencyforces of high carbon business as usual and those oftransformation, to a new low carbon growth model, builtaround a carbon neutral energy system.

101. It will be a messy struggle because of thatintertwining of interests. In a sense, though theincumbency is clearly on the side of business as usual,we the people start off on both sides at the same time.

And it will be an uphill struggle because at the momentthe forces of incumbency, including big oil and big coal,are stronger, wealthier, better organized and better atmanipulating power than are the people - after all they

are part of the incumbency.

102. The key to winning the struggle will be to assemblewhat Gramsci called the countervailing force.

103. There are many interests in society that standnaturally on the side of transformation, of an effectiveresponse to climate change. The trouble is they are not

yet mobilized. They have no common language let


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alone a common agenda, and they have not yet cometogether into a coalition.

104. The most powerful of those interests is you. I mean,young people. My generation is pulling the levers. Yourgeneration is going to face the consequences of howwe pull them.

105. You are the first cohort for a very long time to face aprospect that is worse than the one your parentsinherited. As a generation you have already lostconfidence in the incumbency, and in the political

institutions it has shaped in its own image, to look afteryour interests. You are turning your backs.

106. Dont turn away. You have every right to take yourplace inside the institutions where the incumbencywields its power, if necessary to push your way intothem. Your voice has enormous authority but you arenot using it so you are not heard by the incumbency. It

is not even trying to dissolve you yet, just ignoring you.

107. Our country, in fact our world, needs a newconversation about how to rebuild the contract betweenthe generations. The whole of society revolves aroundthat contract. When it breaks down we lose everything,and it has broken down.

108. And any contract that does not include an effectiveresponse to climate change will not be a contract worthsigning.

Climate: Art

109. But there is another way of looking at climate

change.


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110. Prometheus stole the secret of fire from the Gods.

111. Zeus in anger had Prometheus chained to a rock.Each day an eagle would come and peck out his liver.

At night it would grow back and then the next day theeagle would return and peck it out again. And so on, forever, for poor Prometheus it was always GroundhogDay but without the laughs.

112. Like Prometheus we have stolen fire, for our owngratification, without regard to the consequences, even

now we know what they are.

113. And by now we can feel - I bet every single one ofyou can feel - the pecking of the eagles beak.

114. We behaved as Gods knowing we are mortal.

115. We behaved as if we were separate from Nature, had

dominion over Nature, knowing that we are part of it,subject like everything else to its rules and rhythms.

116. We behaved as if we had the right to defineourselves only according to what makes us differentfrom our neighbours, all the while tightening the screwsof our mutual dependency so that now it is the conditionthat defines our era. Unless we imbue our sense of who

we are with a celebration of what binds us to eachother, we will not be able to manage the forces we haveunleashed. Our destiny will spin out of our control.

117. This is not a story about what we should do. It isabout who we are. Told in that way it is a subject not forpolitics but for art.


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Climate - Artists

118. We can do our best to win the political struggle. Wemust do our best.

119. But if we dont come to terms with what climatechange tells us about who we are, if we fail in thecultural struggle, we will fail in the political struggle. Theincumbency will win, though the victory this time will bepyrrhic because in the face of climate change there willin the end be no winners.

120. Climate change is not just a challenge in its ownright. It signifies the deeper predicament into which wehave fallen by daring to place ourselves outside nature,by claiming for ourselves a luxury of detachment that ispermitted only to gods not to mortals.

121. Not one of us is will be looking on from the audienceas this epic drama plays itself out. We are all on the

stage, and we are improvising the script line by line.And we have come to the pivotal moment in the drama.

122. If we fail the cultural and political examination thatclimate change confronts us with, we will never againhave confidence in our capacity to shape the future. Wewill come to see ourselves, in the words of the Germanphilosopher Thomas Metzinger, as failing beings.

123. If we succeed, for the first time in the 200,000 yearshomo sapienshas walked the Earth, we shall haveattained a state of collective self-awareness as aspecies, and learned to act on it. That would be apassage as significant as any in our ascent, from theutterance of the first word to the present day.


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124. And if we make that passage and those who comeafter us look back on it, it will be in our art that the storyis told.

125. The transformational art of climate change will not beabout climate change explicitly. It will draw inspirationfrom the springs of our identity. It will give us newlanguages of accountability and mutuality. In it we willdiscover the mythic meaning of the choices we face andlearn to summon the strength of mythic heroes inmaking those choices.

126. In other words the transformational art of climatechange will be not be climate art, it will just be art. Andlikewise of course the transformational politics ofclimate change wont be climate politics, just politics.Those are the true arenas.

Hands II

127. Lets now go back to the hands on the sheet.

128. Over much of the world, from Spain to Australia,wherever our palaeolithic ancestors roamed, they leftimages on the walls of caves. We are most familiar withthe animals: the bisons, reindeer, horses, and sabretoothed tigers.

129. But in many of the caves where these early artistsdepicted the animals in whose midst they lived, theyalso left a more mysterious emblem. They left theoutlines of their hands, exactly like the ones on thesheetin fact if you Google these images youll seethat the likeness is quite uncanny.


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130. It is thought they made these images by holding theirhands flat on the surface - just as our volunteers did -and blowing pigment at them through tubes. It wasrecently discovered that nearly all the hands arewomens hands - you can apparently tell from therelative sizes of the fingers. Josephine, this was clearlyan example of the kind of less testosterone-drivenactivity you were calling for.

131. Why was it so important to our ancestors to leavetheir hands on the wall? These images must have beenfull of meaning. Nobody knows today what that might

have been.

132. But consider. When you leave your hand on the walllike that, you are not giving up anything from your hand.You may get a bit of cramp if you hold it there too longbut basically your hand is exactly the same after youhave left the image as it was before.

133. And yet, you have somehow imparted to the wall theessence of your hand. And because your hands aresuch an important part of your body you have in doingso made a statement about who you are, a celebrationof your humanity.

134. And at the same time your hand is what you use tohold a tool, to do the things you need to do. So it is kind

of a bridge between who you are and what you do,between - metaphorically - art and politics.

135. These are images, your hands on the sheet, ourancestors hands on the wall, that can help us drawtogether the two aspects of climate change with whichwe now have to come to terms, the art and the politics.

Actually they are more than a metaphor. They are an


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origin: as close as we can get to where art began andwhere politics began.

136. We have come a long way from the origin. But if wewant to go further we need to look back at it again anddraw inspiration from what happened to us at thatmoment.

You

137. Im not going to attempt a conclusion. I have no

manifesto to suggest, neither political nor artistic: Iwouldnt dare. Except to say this: whether you expressyourselves in politics or art, climate change and whatwe do or dont do about it will affect your livesprofoundly. Its better to reflect on that, and draw yourown conclusions from it, than to pretend its not going tohappen. So engage with it; and find a path across theterrain it is exposing that feels right for you.

138.And dont, whatever you do, take anything theincumbency says to you at face value. If it feels likebusiness as usual - whether explicit or disguised asTancredis change-to-stay-the-same - then havenothing to do with it.

139. From now on, whenever I find myself close to any of

your RCA campuses, I will keep an eye on the walls Iwalk past. If I see one or two ghostly hands stenciled onthem, I will know that what I have said tonight has madesome sense to you.

140. The motorbike never comes back. The father nevercomes back. But we grow, we come to terms with ourloss and we draw strength from it, strength for the

struggle to come.


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John Ashton is an independent commentator. From 200612 he

served as Special Representative for Climate Change to threesuccessive UK Foreign Secretaries, spanning the current

Coalition and the previous Labour Government. He was acofounder and, from 20046, the first Chief Executive of the

think tank E3G. From 19782002, after a brief period as a

research astronomer, he was a career diplomat, with aparticular focus on China.

John is a Trustee of the UK Youth Climate Coalition and ofTipping Point. He is a Non-Executive Director of E3G and aDistinguished Policy Fellow at the Grantham Institute for

Climate Change at Imperial College. He holds visitingprofessorships at the London School of Economics GranthamResearch Institute and at the London University School ofOriental and African Studies.

John Ashton Motorbike Speech

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