Under Construction Journal Issue 6.1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION JOURNAL 6.1 | Page 117

figurative acid community, as well as working-class aristocracy 112 . The latter dimension partially appears
in Johnny’s libidinal fantasies of himself as ‘Don’ of the ruined-vibrant past-future High-rise 113 and in
Bobby’s sense of taste, which indifferent (largely) to money and ability, as with sight, to treat Perry and
Champagne as equal treats -blurring the high and low here 114 . As technology acid may thus cover up as
well as reconstructing, even if the most positive gloss of chain of creativity -acid -intellectual-emotional-
praxis-driven insurrection stands. 115 Acid is integrated into the Domestic sphere of pills on toast, yet as
the matter of ‘blackened malnutrition 116 ’; inventive playfulness of mingling food and drugs nevertheless
sees health become imbalanced, with such imbalance returning like the repressed. And this goes to class
as well as projects of the broadened commons. The retro-futuristic acid ‘uniform’ contains a necessary
solidarity which is sufficiently distinct so as to make it subcultural insurgent, yet this uniform itself
clearly threatens to both obviate identity and , conversely, to bring out intra-class conflict’s Real in the
form of scunner violence; notable that avant-garde ‘sailor uniformed’ Georgie and fisherman sweatered
and multicoloured Bobby which animates the quotidian, part of the substance of social life opens up to
attacks from Scunners 117 as class fractures/disaggregation
Acid brings encounters with the uncanny in terms of Illuminations '. The way to read Bobby’s
acid overdose, visions and move towards is partly as retreat from pornographic instrumental order
which suddenly characterises Bobby’s art 118 in line with his London appropriation; What Bobby's acid
trip marks is 'that full realisation of the fact that that ‘self’ exists only and entirely as an effect of the
infinitely complex set of ever-shifting relations which constitutes it. The apparent psychotic break,
112
Ellen just love drifting through life like a princess on a throne carried about by court jesters or whatever (2010,
28)
113
Johnny dreams about the tower block, calling all the shots in the creaky crappy corridors of the building
imagining himself as Don (all slickback hair and crisp suits) (2010, 28)
114
Laurent-Perrier tastes about the same as 1.40 perry from over the road, and bobby hates the talk of money
(2010, 102)
115
As Georgie says ‘what does it say about your life if you keep having to gloss it in druggy lovey-doveyness (2010,
9)
116
Georgie’s rabid sweet-eating has resulted in her mouth full of silver and white fillings, big lumpy fissure seals
and the odd rotten hole (2010, 67). [Elsewhere] his cheeks look like black triangles as he kisses Georgie so up close
usually the moptop hides all signs of malnutrition (2010, 60)
117
Georgie’s dressed up in a blue and white sailor’s outfit—often she plays up to her Muse status, her and Bobby
the artist flouncing round town in stupid attire and usually only to buy a new oil pastel or jam jar from Lidl (2010,
20)
118
The movement from acid to working-class ‘stories to a kind of pornography, sournesss as well as cocaine, thus
recalls, implicitly and in manner which a reading of the text alongside Owen Hatherley’s 2011 Uncommon People
inspires, homologies between the exceptional artist, commentator on and from the working-class, Bobby’s decline
like Cocker, and Pulp’s This is Hardcore post-fame album, is notably marked as either apotheosis of observation of
personal-social-political in a late 90s structure of feeling or an artistic implosion.
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