Trajan's column dominates the Cast Courts at the V&A. The two sections rise from the floor almost twenty-one metres to the glass ceiling, as legions of frozen Roman soldiers battle forward, spiralling up the plaster-white sides, before coming to an abrupt halt at the capital-less tops. Its imposing presence has the weight of history behind it, an impervious monument to power. Pillar of strength. Solid.

... A door opens at its base. It is London Design Week and interventions across the museum range from the spectacular to the cursory. We queue and wait for an attendant to motion to us that we can enter, one at a time, to step into the void.

Through their name we know that the Cast Courts are a collection of replicas, but it is easy to forget this artifice when we are used to being promised the authentic, and therefore to be standing at the centre of a column still perplexes. The perceived solidity unravels and the mask slips as the inner workings begin to be revealed. All is thrown into question.

Light filters in from the open summit, the walls are brick and occasional wooden struts feebly intersect the chamber. It is like looking up from the bottom of the well. The experience had felt exhilarating before - the privilege of entering the inner sanctum - but this sensation triggers a wave of claustrophobia and the sense of exclusivity gives way to one of entrapment. Is this where the power is, here, at the centre? And if not, what are the forces willing the column to stand? I am distracted from the LDW installation that surrounds me. I've been loitering too long and should leave.

The ancient generals and craftsmen probably did not foresee this second column and its other life beyond their empire. And now we occupy another monument, power structure, symbol of authority. From gazing up through the column to a cross-hatched sky, we meet here in the sub-basement.

Here the inscriptions in the police cells one floor above us do not glorify emperors, they commemorate ‘Rob the Mod’ and ‘Dave the Rocker’,

A View From Below: Inside Trajan’s Column

Rosie Hermon

those without power caught up in battles of a different kind, under a different regime.

From here in fact we can look in all directions, interrogating traces of the past, present realities, unrealities and visions of the future. Mysticism, imperialism, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, neoliberalism... There are those systems which have gone before us and others that will come after. Though history tells us that every regime will have its afterlife. As the sub-basement itself precariously negotiates the tension created by the lure of the past and the pull of the future, it becomes a relevant point of departure from which to conduct an examination of the slippage between different and occasionally oppositional forces. In a reflection on the particularities of the post-institutional site, each of the pieces selected asks questions about the way that we interpret systems of power and how conflicting forces help us to negotiate the present moment.

Another commonality between the works is the presence of the individual as a conduit for the channelling of abstract forces – making the invisible visible through lived experience. Whether this be through complicit participation, conspicuous absence or through a process of reclamation and taking ownership.

Through these different approaches our attention is drawn once again to the inner workings and the way that power is constructed through system and narrative, and as when stepping inside Trajan’s column, all is not what it seems.

Somewhere Deep the Shadows Rock

‘Dave The Rocker’ once scratched ‘ere, where cold walls bring false solace. Bet you didn’t know I’d seen the world inside-out, or felt the steel of cuffs. I didn’t know that I was falling; all I saw was this shadow...

running –my boots colliding with cement ground cobbled street, the two sides of my one face. The first I catch a time ago in Paige & Son’s window-a long stubbled drag amongst hanging meat. Got for murder – me, who’d a

thought it –killed myself along the way. The poor soul’s curse of wretched living; I couldn’t find a lit-path out. Enclosed in prison’s tomb. I fumble for dent or line, or name, I feel my side-burns, my arms outstretched, my black...

cracks –the second side reflects pain on pane, clean-shaven chin, Brylcream and tight leather jacket. I flick a cigarette and watch a spray of tiny orange flame. The grandson in bloodied white reaches for a joint in the window

display –we spread out on the rundown seafront; kids fighting kids fighting the governing forces that bring us to our knees, bound us wayward sheep, shuffled into the back of police cars; grease, scooter oil. We bray and bleat

nothing –bet you didn’t know that’s the last thing you see, when they lead you down to the basement. Scrub on skin again and again; wash me in cold salt water. The sting, pink foam, blood-bristles, hard soap-cover my body

unbroken – The sins of me against fading space, spreads quickly like winter dark. Only regret, fast-breath, cloaked promise of a better next life. I bang my fists on stone until they’re red. ‘It wasn’t me, you got the wrong...’

shadow.Harry Barnett

As part of a series of investigations into transnationalism, the Doublethink Project put each of the national anthems of the world together to create 'A Global Anthem'.

Doublethink’s intention is to gather different viewpoints of contemporary life within the realms of conceptual art, social science and alternative and investigational approaches to cultural abstractions. The intention is to make the investigations as varied as possible to generate more questions, better answers and stronger solutions.

Sarah Duffy b. 1986 is an Artist currently living and working in London. In 2013 she graduated from her MFA Fine Art degree at Goldsmiths and for the past year she has been on a residency with London based arts organisation ACME. Duffy's first Solo exhibition 'Breathless' opened at The Acme Project Space in early October and she has also recently been involved in an Artists exchange program with the ICA Moscow.

Key to Duffy's current practice is a fascination with the art of ventriloquism, particularly with ventriloquism’s beginnings away from its modern incarnation as a variety act that makes use of a dummy. Instead, Duffy is concerned with the practice of belly speaking, or speaking without movement of the lips, which extends far back throughout various religions and spiritual practices, chronicling the complex relationship humans have had with the voice over time.

Woman were particularly associated with the practice at its beginnings. Like The Pythia, The Oracle of Delphi, many women who were engaged in spiritual and necromantic practices utilised illusion, cunning and trickery alongside the practice of belly speaking. Their bodies were seen as supernatural vessels, a view that obscured the fact that these women were employing their beings as powerful performative instruments, capable of manipulating those around

1. Doublethink Project, A Global Anthem

2. Sarah Duffy, Enjoy The Silence

Patrick Goddard (b.1984/UK) is an artist and writer working in East London. Recent works deal with issues as diverse as urban regeneration, identity politics, anarcho-individualism and finance: taking the form of videos, books, drawings, performances and sculpture.

them. However, this history of female cunning is not without tragedy, ambiguity and horror; starlet ventriloquist of her day and likely epileptic, Elizabeth Barton, ended up with her head on a spike after she tried to use her powers of prophecy and ventriloquial utterances to prevent the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

Fascinated with the history of these lauded and yet often vilified female performative figures, Duffy set out a year ago to learn this discipline for herself. For this show she will be performing Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy the silence’ live through the art of ventriloquism. It is a song about the violence and uselessness of words, but it is also a song that contradicts itself with its profound and moving lyrical poetry. Perhaps at its heart, it is a song about how we are unable to escape from the labyrinth of language we live in; a labyrinth that sometimes prevents us from connecting with other human beings.

3. Patrick Goddard, Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap

Bryony Bird

View of the Red Barn at Polstead

Flanked by flowering trees, a smartly dressed couple stand by the doors. A calf and two small animals complete the rural idyll. But do not be deceived. In 1827 the man, William Corder, murdered the woman, Maria Marten and buried her in the barn. This pottery was produced in Staffordshire in 1828.

The Maria Marten murder caught the public imagination. It had everything. It had Sex. Disguise. Deception. Murder. Premonition. A trial. Retribution.

The case gained huge publicity and 20,000 people witnessed the hanging of Corder. Those who could afford it paid high prices for pieces of the hanging rope. People went to the Red Barn and tried the grave for size. There was a great demand for souvenirs; as well as a number of ceramics, death masks were made of Corder. Copies of the trial were sold. One such copy, bound in Corder’s own skin, resides at the Bury museum. Re-enactments of the murder were staged and towards the end of 1828 a melodrama entitled The Red Barn was performed in a London theatre.

All this perhaps makes us feel a little uncomfortable. But are we any more sophisticated? As far as I know, we are not producing ceramics commemorating murder to place on our mantelpieces. But our fascination with crime and criminals is undimmed. Why did our ancestors want to own pottery that told a gruesome story? How do we attempt to own and understand stories about crime today? Whatever the answers may be, the dark side of human nature continues to intrigue.

Jill Vigus

Burnt out. Caffeined up. Crashing down.‘Overdoing it...’‘... house and family...’‘... overtime...’‘Too much pressure...’‘Overkill’Falling further from the voices, you cannot grasp their disembodied meaning any more.More. Better. Faster. No longer.

Sliding deeper down into the abyss.Inside a cell. Voices in the dark corridor:‘Tagged?’‘Yeah. Microchipped in the wrist.Trackable and traceable - every output monitored by the Boss.’‘Good. Can’t be too careful with slackers. Breaking all the rules.The threatening stench of stale masculinity - unwashed and unchecked.The Boss. This is his domain.Down here, where the sunlight never shines, he rulesaccording to a dark, unwritten law: crystallised by timeand tradition into something solid, something powerful and absolute.This caged tiger, just below the surface, waiting to

tear you apart.Tumbling down deeperThe utter darkness is torn open by a flash of light, skimming and streaming past.It invites you, promising everything you need.teaching you to breathe for the first time, to feel and to grow and to know.In this moment of silent stillnessyou are nothing but your breathingand you have everything you ever needed.

Joe Evans and Sally Willow

In a practice spanning video, drawing, text, music and installation, Alice May Williams dips in and out of different 'social groups’ - testing their boundaries, and finding the gaps and overlaps in their identifying gestures, genres, colours, codes, territories and languages.

We Can Do It! deconstructs the oft reproduced and recreated image of Rosie the Riveter, offering multiple symbolic and semiotic interpretations of what the contemporary importance of such an image might be. The video asks "Who is the we that we become when we gaze at her painted face?" And gestures toward some of the coded signals that might be embedded in the roll of her sleeve. The affective tone of We Can Do It! veers between a critical unpicking of the revolutionary uselessness of slogans and a celebration of the power of iconic images.

Rosie Carr makes films about people, how they live, and the things that surround them. She is interested in the way filmic image understands truth, the elusive colloquy between truth and fiction and the act of slipping from one to the other. Cozy yet surprising, she wants to make you remember something that didn’t quite happen this way.

Carr seeks to find captivating histories, personal or otherwise, invented, remembered, embellished. Her practice is heavily informed by ethnography, it looks to the silver screen for influence in movement and comic timing, from Riefenstahl to Chaplin. Carr makes films about people and their activities that must be saved and archived, fixed down for future use. What can make us pause in the present and gather together to re-imagine the past? How can we better imagine the future?

In The Ballad of Toothless Dave, Carr experiments with video abstraction, drawing on the atmosphere of the Old Police Cells Museum and re-imagining its most infamous era, the 1960s, through the meandering thoughts of an inmate. Carr has screened work throughout the UK and internationally at a range of festivals, theatres and galleries.

4. Alice May Williams, We Can Do It!

5. Rosie Carr, The Ballad of Toothless Dave

www.spvltd.com

Dispanded

What is it about our fascination with abandoned spaces? I find myself compelled to climb in and explore, find out stories and solve puzzles with the objects left and writings on the walls. I’ve wondered around abandoned nunneries, old Asylums, office blocks and houses; intrigued by the many buildings that are unused not just around Sussex but new places I visit. I find myself wanting to know more about the history, the people that lived or worked there and why it was closed. Why is it not being used? Sometimes there is no answer sometimes buildings just get lost, swept under the carpet so to speak.

These photos are taken with my Golden half split screen 35mm camera. The top photo and bottom show the walls inside and out of a house found in the countryside in Kent. It seemed to have been unused for 50 years or so. Peeling wall paper and missing floor boards revealed the layers of time.

The photo in the middle depicts a scene of an exhibition used in the space where Taj used to be on the Old Steine in Brighton which is now another Sainsbury’s. For a small amount of time the space was occupied to try and prevent it becoming another supermarket.

The future is full of these lost spaces being used and awakened from slumbers of abandonment. I look forward to working alongside, inside and wondering around more spaces that need to be used, not lost.

Emily Rose

I met Grace at the Flamingo. I'll never forget it; she was wearing a mustard gold dress wrapped around her like foil on chocolate. She told me later it was a Michael Howard number but I was none the wiser. I was on a French blue at the time and a bit cocky, so I had no trouble chatting her up. She lost her friends and we found a nice corner to cosy up in. Then Louie Louie exploded from the speakers with its banging keys and she leapt up like a jack in a box, dragging me to follow. We danced for hours that night, laughing and coiling until a slow number and those brown saucer eyes moved in for a kiss.

It wasn't long before we started dating after that, and I was the happiest man alive. We spent hours together listening to records, drinking coffee at the Zodiac or looking for clothes to blend our look. It was the summer and we looked sharp as flints. Wherever we went, we were the king and queen.

The sex was always wild with Grace. She liked to be in control whenever the mood took her. I’d never experienced anything so uninhibited and passionate before, but the more blues she took, the wilder it got. I lost count of the number of times I had to make excuses at work about cutting myself shaving, but the bruises were harder to explain. Sometimes I wore long sleeves to hide the marks on my arms. You couldn't say no to Grace, I had to be ready whenever she wanted. This was easier said than done sometimes, but if I couldn’t, there’d be a row and taunts about me not being man enough.

Tonight she punched me straight in the face and I had to react. I grabbed her arms, threw her off me and held her down on the floor. After a few minutes she calmed down and began to cry so I let her go so she could move out from under me. I wished I hadn’t lost control, but what could I do? Her face was thunder, streaked and glistening with her tears. 'Look what you did to me' she screamed, holding up arms tracked by red wheals and welts.

When the police arrived they believed her. She told them I got angry when she said she was pregnant. She held up her arms and said that this wasn’t the first time. She was genuinely frightened and I could see the

Sometimes He Wears Long Sleeves

Sub-Cell: A View From Below

Curator: Rosie HermonGraphic Design: Sara LoiperdingerZine Coordinator: Scarlett HermonGraphics & Communications: Dan Green

I would like to extend my thanks to all the people that have helped me to realise this project, through giving their time, patience, creativity and expertise. I would like to say a particularly big thank you to those that generously donated to the project through the Kickstarter campaign, including the following:

Karen Alexander, Jenny Bell, Louise Bristow, Philip Cole, Irene & John Cooper, Mike Cowburn, Rebecca Drew, Lisa Finch, Liam Healy, Alison Hermon, Basil Hermon, Basil & Moya Hermon, Ruby Hermon, Laurence Hill, Harry Hillery, Sally Johnson, Sophie Rhiannon Jones, Kathy MacCarthy, Barbara Munro, Sunil Shah, Tamsin Silvey, Jean Sinfield, Helen Turner

Harry Hillery

disgust in their faces. She said she was terrified to be left alone with me so they took me in. No one would believe me and despite everything I felt so ashamed of hurting her. I’m not a violent man, never been in a fight.

I’m waiting in a cell now, passing the time scratching the wall with the sixpence they didn’t find in my pocket when they charged me.

‘Rob the Mod, 8th June 1964’

Doublethink ProjectA Global AnthemSarah DuffyEnjoy the Silence

Patrick GoddardDirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap

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Alice May WilliamsWe Can Do It!Rosie CarrThe Ballad of Toothless DaveSPV Ltd -Providers of a Tax Haven

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1. Doublethink ProjectA Global Anthem

2. Sarah DuffyEnjoy the Silence

3. Patrick GoddardDirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap

4. Alice May WilliamsWe Can Do It!

5. Rosie CarrThe Ballad of Toothless Dave

6. SPV Ltd Providers of a Tax Haven